Megha Rajagopalan
While Myanmar's reforms this year may appear speedy to outside observers, for its imprisoned activists, the changes are long overdue
For four and a half years, the only two human beings Ko Ko Gyi saw each day were a prison guard and the man who brought him his meals. The famed Burmese democracy activist spent the better part of the past two decades behind bars -- first for his leadership in the 1988 student-led democracy movement, and later for his role in the 2007 anti-government protests that became known as the Saffron Revolution. Most recently, in November 2008, he was sentenced to 65 years and six months in prison, in part for emailing three political statements.
Then, on the morning of Friday, Jan. 13, as he sat in a remote prison in east Shan State, the prison warden came to his cell with a long-awaited piece of news: He, along with 651 other prisoners in cells around Myanmar, would be set free. That afternoon, he boarded a plane back to the old capital.
The following evening, I met Ko Ko Gyi at the Yangon apartment of Mya Aye, another leader in the 1988 student movement who had also just been released from prison. Set in a quiet east Yangon neighborhood, the modest apartment was full of glass cabinets cluttered with books and stacked porcelain dishes. A large stuffed tiger sprawled out in the corner. The two men sat on sofas in the living room with other old friends, sipping tea and waiting for news of other newly released comrades still in transit from every corner of the country as a Korean soap opera played in the background. It would be a week of emotional reunions for lifelong political activists who were finally seeing, but hardly daring to believe, their country making strides toward real democracy. That week, the gaunt faces of the "88 Generation" student leaders, as the venerable activists are known here, stared out from the front pages of newspapers, a decision that would have likely gotten editors imprisoned just a year ago. The pace of Myanmar's reforms over the past year has elicited plaudits from the international community, but for Burmese activists, this final push has been decades in the making -- and no one has had to sacrifice more in the fight for democracy than the nation's thousands of political prisoners.
"We love each other more than siblings," Mya Aye said. "Nobody can understand the suffering of those who have been imprisoned again and again, only those who have experienced it." The 88 Generation Students loom large in Myanmar's decades-long struggle for democracy, their names synonymous with the nation's most famous democratic uprising, which catapulted Aung San Suu Kyi into the public eye for the first time. Shortly after the Burmese military crushed the democratic uprising in 1988, they imprisoned many of the student leaders in Yangon's Insein Prison, said to have the toughest regulations of any prison in the country.
After releasing some of the activists in the two decades that followed, the government rearrested many of them after the 2007 protests. This time, the government took care to cut off any possibility of contact between them, sending them to isolated prisons in remote areas around the country. Some were days' travel from their families in Yangon and denied access to medical care. Now geographically separated, they could only pass messages, mostly about their physical and mental health, through visiting family members.
Then, on Jan. 13, the military-backed government released all of the 88 Generation Student leaders along with dozens of other prominent democracy advocates. Emerging into the sunlight, they were greeted by old friends, family and representatives from Aung San Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy party. World leaders and international observers have embraced the amnesty as another positive sign from President Thein Sein's government, which, in the past year, has initiated reforms including increasing press freedom, opening dialogue with Aung San Suu Kyi, and legalizing labor unions.
For the prisoners themselves, the release has brought relief and a reason to be cautiously optimistic, coupled with bitterness for years lost behind bars. "Of course the amnesty is a good thing, but really, we shouldn't have been arrested in the first place," Ko Ko Gyi said with a grim smile.
Many have emerged with chronic health problems and ravaged finances. Min Ko Naing, the leader of the 88 Generation Students, nearly went blind from an eye infection prison authorities refused to treat. Their families have also paid a high price. Zaw Thet Htwe, another '88 democracy activist and the former editor of a popular sports magazine, spent four years in Taunggyi prison in Shan State before being released on Jan. 13. He had been arrested twice before and spent months on death row. After an overnight journey back to Yangon, his wife and five-year-old daughter, born just months before his arrest, greeted him at the airport. His daughter threw her arms around him in the arrivals hall and mistakenly called him "uncle," his wife told me with a laugh. ("I believed I'd never see my daughter grow up," he said.)
At Taunggyi, Zaw Thet Htwe said he had more freedom than during his previous stint at more restrictive Insein. By the beginning of 2011, restrictions were loosened, allowing him brief periods outside to play pick-up games of soccer with other inmates. They were even allowed to watch movies from a recent Yangon film festival where films, for the first time, were not censored -- "I saw them before my wife did," he said. Still, these privileges were little comfort. All Zaw Thet Htwe could think about was his daughter growing up without him. He spent afternoons hunched over a notebook, composing long poems about her in a neat, measured hand. "In those days, this is what kept a hope and energy in my heart," he said.
He didn't quite believe he was being released until his car ride into town after leaving the prison gates, he said. The NLD members who greeted him and other newly released prisoners flanked the car on motorcycles and blared their horns, announcing their release to the world. "My happiness came out bigger and bigger on that car ride," he said.
Like Zaw Thet Htwe, journalist Sithu Zeya, 22, said his first reaction to hearing news of his release was utter disbelief. Twice last year, groups of prisoners had walked free as part of the government's amnesty program, leaving him crushed at being left behind. Then, finally, the prison's warden posted the list of prisoners to be released Jan. 13. His name was on it.
"Even though I was released, I wasn't completely happy," said Sithu Zeya, who had worked secretly as a video journalist for the Thailand-based broadcaster Democratic Voice of Burma. "When I was taken away from my cell, I felt sorry for those still inside." Many still left in prison, he believes, are ethnic leaders. Myanmar's government continues to deny the existence of political prisoners, claiming that those in prison are just criminals.
The story of Sithu Zeya's arrest began at his journalism teacher's home in April 2010 in Yangon, during the Burmese New Year water festival. Hearing the sounds of grenade blasts, he grabbed his camera and ran outside to photograph images of the aftermath. The police arrested him shortly after. They beat him and denied him sleep, food and water. He was eventually sentenced to a total of 18 years.
He spent the first year and a half in Insein. He was only allowed to leave his 9 foot by 7 foot cell for an hour each morning, during which he would pace the prison's narrow corridor. He read whenever and whatever he could, particularly old issues of Reader's Digest, which were judged by authorities to be sufficiently apolitical. Desperately lonely, he once pretended to have the flu so he could enter the infirmary -- his only chance at fleeting contact with other prisoners.
I met Sithu Zeya at his family's apartment last week with his friend Kaung Myat Hlaing, also 22, a fellow political prisoner he had befriended during that trip to the infirmary. Both had been released on Jan. 13. Kaung Myat Hlaing was arrested and tortured in 2010 for spreading anti-government information online. He worries he will never be allowed to return to university because of his criminal record. Still, the two were adamant about returning to work as quickly as possible. Sithu Zeya said he plans to continue to work as a journalist -- though with greater press freedoms in place, this time, he hopes to find a position in domestic media.
It remains to be seen whether President Thein Sein's promise to allow the released political prisoners to participate in "nation building" is genuine. Whatever the case, the eight I interviewed all planned to return to political activism, journalism and creative pursuits, holding out a guarded optimism that they could do so, this time, in the open. Mya Aye said he hoped the 88 Generation Students could now communicate directly with the government instead of organizing protests. Zaw Thet Htwe is at work on a script for a film depicting the life of General Aung San, which he will make in collaboration with his friend, the Burmese comedian Zarganar, and Aung San Suu Kyi, the general's daughter -- a project that would have been unthinkable a year ago.
"As '88 students, our mission is here in Myanmar," Mya Aye said. "We are not afraid to be caught. We are doing the right thing." He recalled a feeling of naiveté when first entering activism in 1988. "When I was younger, I didn't understand much about politics," he said. "I just couldn't tolerate injustice. That's why I joined the movement."
The amnesty has not come without conditions. According to agreements some said they signed before their release, if convicted of another crime, they would be forced to serve out the remainder of their sentences -- no matter how minor the infraction. It's no small matter in a country where even failing to notify officials of visiting houseguests can result in imprisonment. "I don't think it can be called a genuine amnesty," Mya Aye said. "What has been done in the past hasn't been completely erased."
Zaw Thet Htwe echoed the sentiment. "I want to believe that I'm totally free, but I can't trust 100 percent," he said. "I believe the president is an honest and righteous person, but he is not the only one in the government."
Eight days after their release, the 88 Generation Students held a press conference on the seventh floor of a mall in Yangon. About 500 mostly Burmese journalists and supporters sat on pink plastic chairs or crowded around the activists with cameras. Clad in dress shirts and dark longyis, the group's leaders made impassioned statements on cessation of ethnic conflicts, release of the remaining political prisoners, and their support for Aung San Suu Kyi and her National League for Democracy party, to thunderous applause. A statement handed out to the press said the group would "participate to the fullest extent with the government led by the president, the parliament, military, political parties and ethnic minority groups for the emergence of democracy, peace and development."
It was their first public appearance together since 2007. Just a year ago, the very names of the 88 Generation Students could be uttered in public only in hushed tones. I also found it remarkable that none of the dissidents I interviewed believed they were under government surveillance or that their phones were tapped. "Even if they are watching me, I don't care anymore," Mya Aye said. "I have nothing to hide."
One evening, I walked back to my hotel with a Burmese journalist I know. Yangon's streets were crowded with diners sitting at low plastic tables, drinking bowls of noodle soup and cups of strong, milky tea. A few street vendors were selling laminated portraits of Aung San Suu Kyi from blankets stretched out on the sidewalk. I commented to my friend that outsiders have been shocked by how quickly the reforms over the past year have taken place, one after the other.
My friend let out a short, bitter laugh. "Quick?" he asked. "How many people died fighting for this in 1988 and 2007? How many thousands of people?"
