Burma Media Watch 2001

Burmese democracy activist Aung Ko receives the Golden Pen of Freedom awards from World Editors Forum President Ruth De Aquino on behalf of imprisoned journalists San San Nweh and U Win Tin.

Remarks by Ruth de Aquino, President of the World Editors Forum, at the Award of the Golden Pen of Freedom at the Opening Ceremony of the 54th World Newspaper Congress and 8th World Editors Forum, Hong Kong, 4 June 2001

Ladies and Gentleman,

This year, for only the second time in the forty years of Golden Pen awards, the World Association of Newspapers and the World Editors Forum will be honouring two individuals. Two journalists in Burma who since six o'clock this morning have been forced to squat with their heads bowed staring at the bamboo mats they have slept on. Today, like every other day for several years past, their every waking hour will be spent in silence.

U Win Tin and Daw San San Nweh have, in the eyes of the military junta that seized Burma in 1990, committed the "crime" of calling for democracy. The country's two most renowned imprisoned journalists are being punished so that they will reflect on their subversion and retract their writings. Let us in turn reflect a little on the deeds of U Win Tin and Daw San San Nweh.

You will all of you here today be familiar with the Nobel Prize winner and democracy advocate Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, who founded the National League of Democracy until her party, which had won democratic elections, was crushed in the cruel coup d'état of 1990.

But you will be less familiar with the co-founder of the National League of Democracy, the journalist and writer U Win Tin, who was imprisoned just three months after Daw San Suu Kyi. His influence on the country was such that later it was considered too dangerous for U Win Tin to be free at the same time as Daw San Suu Kyi. For U Win Tin was the editor of "Hanthawati", the most influential independent daily newspaper of its time in the former Burma.

U Win Tin was sentenced by a military tribunal to 14 years of prison in 1989 for advocating democracy. A year later he played a leading role in a hunger strike inside the notorious Insein Prison, and in 1995 had the courage and vision to smuggle out letters describing conditions in Insein Prison to Professor Yozo Yokota, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Human Rights in Myanmar, the junta's new name for Burma.

For this brave act, drawing international attention to the crimes perpetuated by the military junta in Myanmar, U Win Tin was beaten, removed from all human contact, deprived of all writing materials, transferred to Myingyan Jail in the north of Rangoon and sentenced to an additional seven years of imprisonment.

Daw San San Nweh, a prolific novelist, poet and political activist, was at the age of fifteen the first Burmese woman to train as a journalist and went on to become the influential editor of Gita Ppade-tha and Einmet-hpu. She was sentenced in August 1994 to ten years in prison for "anti-government reports" to French journalists and for "providing information about the human rights situation to the UN special rapporteur for Burma".

The editor and writer, who had served long periods in prison for her political activities before being sentenced in 1994, shares her cell with three other personalities of the National League for Democracy in the Prison of Tharrawady, to the north of Rangoon. Her daughter, Myat Mo Mo Tun, was also arrested in 1994 and served five years for the "crime" of contacting a newspaper in exile until she was released in March 2000.

Both U Win Tin and Daw San San Nweh are in the poorest health. In July, at the age of 71, U Win Tin will have completed his twelfth year in prison and his sixth year in solitary confinement. He is suffering from spondylitis, otherwise known as degeneration of the spine, along with heart disease, chronic dental problems and hypertension. For three years he has been reported to be close to death, but family and friends have been refused visits for over five years now.

Daw San San Nweh is currently suffering from kidney infection, arthritis, partial paralysis, high blood pressure and eye problems. She is a widow and her children, who are living below the poverty line, are experiencing enormous difficulties raising the money needed to bring her the scant rations she receives to survive. She saw her children for the first time in seven years at her home in Yankin, for three hours in April, when accompanied by a military intelligence service escort.

Prison authorities, embarrassed by their courage and suffering health, have long offered these journalists freedom if they renounce all political activity. They have regularly refused. In the indirect communication we have had with U Win Tin and San San Nweh, we know that if they survive until 2010 and 2004 when their respective sentences expire, they have every intention of continuing their "work in support of democracy in Burma". Daw Aung San Suu Kyi has indeed said of U Win Tin: "A man of courage and integrity, U Win Tin could not be intimidated into making false confessions he is as clear as ever and his spirit upright and unwavering".

U Win Tin's and Daw San San Nweh's tale is a tale of terror. Furthermore, it is extremely difficult for the international community to keep abreast of the latest developments in such cases, when the last independent press organ in the country was banned in 1989, when foreign journalists are regularly refused visas and expelled if they address the issue of human rights, when independent journalists fled in terror and in scores over ten years ago, when dozens of writers died in prison and when the most prominent independent journalists are behind bars. Where it is a crime to own a computer modem, send an email, connect to the Internet or invite a foreigner into your home.

Their tale, terrible as it is, is not a case apart. Thirteen journalists remain in prison in Myanmar, and a large part of these journalists have been kept in prison for over a decade. Today, let us not their fellow colleagues, journalists in prison who also refuse to exchange their freedom for the renunciation of their work and integrity: U Soe Thein, Sein Hla Oo, U Thein Tan, Ohn Kyaing, Sein Hlaing, Myo Myint Nyein, Aung Zin Win, Cho Seint, U Thar Bann, Sonny and Aung Myint.

Over a hundred media outlets have campaigned on their behalf. Thousands could. All of you here today could contribute to the campaign for their freedom. We all know that the independent press has a key role to play in every country. But it has a particularly key role to play in a country such as Myanmar, which in ten years has doubled its armed forces, strangled education and health care, banned all discussion of re-elections, and

flouted every notion of human rights.

The man who will accept the Golden Pen of Freedom on behalf of Daw San San Nweh and U Win Tin knows this better than most. Aung Ko, a former translator and interpreter, was forced to flee his country in the late 1980s with thousands of others. He has never since been back, but works with the Burmese community in exile to promote democracy within his country. Some of you here will recognise Aung Ko as the leading male actor in John Boorman's famous film "Rangoon" which mobilised the international community in their

concern for Burma's cause in 1994.

When Daw Aung Suu Kyi was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1994, she said she could not accept the honour in her name, but in the name of her compatriots. When U Win Tin received the UNESCO Guillermo Cano Prize earlier this year he accepted it "on behalf of all the democratic forces, including writers and journalists, who are struggling for freedom in Burma" and expressed his intention to use the $25 000 award to set up a foundation for those fighting for democracy, especially writers and journalists. Daw San San Nweh would have reacted in a similarly generous and self-effacing way when she received the Reporters sans Frontières Foundation Prize in 1999.

So today let us pay homage to all those struggling for freedom of expression in Myanmar, and Aung Ko prominent among them, with a particular focus on the brave undaunted spirits of U Win Tin and Daw San San Nweh.