COVER STORY

COMMENTS (0)

RECOMMEND (446)

FACEBOOK

TWITTER

PLUSONE

MORE

E-MAIL

PRINT

TEXT SIZE

You will be afraid like me but I want you to open your eyes and continue to carry out your duties.”

 

Three hundred of her supporters gathered outside the court house when she was driven off in a prison van. They included NLD members, well-known student leaders—and the villagers whose rights she so bravely defended.

 

Hnin Sandar [Defiant Widow/Activist]

 

The widow of NLD youth member Aung Hlaing Win, Hnin Sandar has vowed to dedicate her energies to uncovering the true circumstances of his death while under interrogation.

 

Aung Hlaing Win was arrested by intelligence agents in early May 2005 at a suburban Rangoon restaurant. Ten days later, an army officer called on his wife, Hnin Sandar, and informed her he had died from a heart attack while being interrogated.

 

Hnin Sandar took up the case with a local court, which insisted her husband had not been a healthy man and had died from “natural” causes. A doctor told the court, however, that he had found 24 injuries, including bruises, on Aung Hlaing Win’s body.

 

Hnin Sandar, assisted by an NLD legal team, then approached a higher court, which rejected their appeal for a reinvestigation of the case. Hnin Sandar vowed not to give up her search for the truth, backed now in her determined stand by Amnesty International.

 

Aung Din [Exiled Activist]

 

When Burmese opposition groups claim that the country’s ruling junta holds its population of some 54 million as hostages, skeptics may dismiss it as little more than exaggerated rhetoric. For Aung Din, a former political prisoner and co-founder of a Washington-based lobby group, the claim carries more weight; particularly after hearing the news that the junta had arrested every member of his family, except his octogenarian grandfather.

 

In the aftermath of deadly bomb attacks in Rangoon last May, the government—having no clues to the identities of the bombers—began interrogating the families of exiled dissidents who were outspoken critics of the military government. Aung Din’s family quickly became targets of Burma’s revamped intelligence agency, which detained his mother, sister and brother in an undisclosed location for several days. They were later released after foreign media organizations reported on the arrests.

 

According to information received by The Irrawaddy, members of Burma’s thuggish Union Solidarity and Development Association distributed posters with Aung Din’s picture throughout Rangoon, identifying him as a suspect in the bomb attacks. The posters also included the names of his family members, who were thus implicated with Aung Din as suspects without any supporting evidence. As a result, their safety—as well as their reputations—was put at considerable risk

 

“I felt so bad for my family members,” said Aung Din, the policy director at US Campaign for Burma. “But I hope they would understand that I never get involved in violent activities. This is the military’s hostage-taking harassment.” Given his past affiliations in Burma, it is not surprising that the junta has targeted him. Now in his early 40s, Aung Din was once a student union leader and colleague of prominent student leader Min Ko Naing during the 1988 uprising.

 

Aung Din was arrested in early 1989 and spent more than four years in prison. Following his release in 1993, he completed his studies in engineering and left Burma. He spent several years in Singapore before moving to the Thai-Burma border in 2000 to join the Assistance Association for Political Prisoners. A year later, he arrived in the United States to work with the Free Burma Coalition.

 

A dispute with FBC founder Dr Zarni over the group’s policy on Burma led Aung Din and American activist Jeremy Woodrum to leave the group in 2003 and form their own organization, the US Campaign for Burma.