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With his wits and his courage, he has risen up in revolution,” Tin Moe said in an interview with The Irrawaddy during his last visit to Thailand’s northern city of Chiang Mai. 

Tin Moe was highly regarded for his selfless devotion to the democracy movement since 1988. He also never shied away from strongly supporting detained democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi. Describing o­ne of his interrogations with Burmese military intelligence officers, Tin Moe said: “I told the military officer that you look o­n Daw Suu simply as the wife of a British [man]. But for us, she is the daughter of our national hero, Gen Aung San.”

For his commitment to democracy, Tin Moe was imprisoned in the infamous Insein prison in 1991 and remained behind bars without a pen for four years. After his release, all his works were banned in Burma. For fear of being denied his pen forever, Tin Moe left his motherland at the age of 71. 

Tin  Moe o­nce declared, “Poetry is my breath; poems are my bread.” Indeed, not a day passed when he did not compose a new verse or give a literary speech to Burmese communities around the world.

The late Mexican Nobel laureate and poet Octavio Paz said that the great poets always take part in the struggle for freedom. Tin Moe is no exception. His poems shine with his love of freedom, and they are now considered revolutionary works that energized the spirit of Burma’s freedom fighters.

Now the cigar is burnt down and the sun has darkened. And he has lost his home forever. Fellow poet and exile Win Pe said this about Tin Moe after his death: “He loves freedom, sometimes to the extreme. He thinks that even to take care of eating and sleeping limits his freedom. He lived a free man till the end.’’