In a statement sent to
The Irrawaddy, the Czech foreign ministry also said that the Czech Republic “remains concerned at continuous grave human rights violations in Burma/Myanmar” and questioned the efficacy of the regime’s “road map to democracy.”
Although this show of Czech support comes more than 40 years after Minn Latt left Czechoslovakia and more than 20 years after his death in the jungles of northern Burma, Minn Latt and the others like him who traveled overseas and demonstrated a willingness to stand up to the successive Burmese regimes were the ones who laid the foundation for future generations of activists and built the bridges that led to support from foreign nations.
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| A photograph of Burmese meeting in Prague in the 1960s. (Photo: Burma Center Prague/Dagmar Bečková) |
Like many Burmese and Czech activists, Minn Latt did not see the results he wanted in his lifetime. But the current democratic state of the Czech Republic is proof that a seemingly hopeless oppression can be reversed if the opposition perseveres. If the Burmese people are one day able to overcome their persecutors the way the Czechs did, then the two countries will share the further bond of two nations that were able to throw off the chains of totalitarian oppression to become free and democratic states. Minn Latt will have been one of the forefathers of that bond, and if he were alive today, he would most likely deliver the same message to junta chief Snr-Gen Than Shwe that he previously delivered to Ne Win: “Tell the world the truth about Burma.”
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