Portraits from the Border

The two brothers were arrested for launching a poster campaign against the junta-organized National Convention in 1993.

Nearly a decade after his release, Kyaw Soe Win was once again a wanted man. In 2007, he took part in the monk-led Saffron Revolution before fleeing a ruthless crackdown on protesters. This led him to seek asylum at the Umpiem Mai refugee camp in Thailand, where he and his wife and son now await a chance to resettle in a third country.

His son is now his greatest hope. He dreams of a bright future for him in the West, where he should be able to get a good education. But sometimes the five-year-old boy doesn’t understand why they had to leave their relatively comfortable life in Rangoon to live in a hut that feels like it could be blown away by the wind at any moment.

Kyaw Soe Win knows that sometimes you have to take a step backward before you can go forward. Even so, it is hard to bear being confined again in conditions that are not much better than those he experienced in prison. When he begins to feel that his life is going nowhere, he likes to sit on a rock that looks down over a twisting and turning road that heads into Mae Sot.

“This is the only time I feel any relief,” he said, pointing toward the road that he hopes will one day take him away from this place, never to return.

Than Hla, Burma’s Nelson Mandela

Burma has at least 2,100 political prisoners in detention, but even this number is small compared to all those who have served time for their political convictions over the past half-century of military rule. Of these untold thousands of former political prisoners, however, only one can claim the distinction of being called “Burma’s Nelson Mandela.”

Than Hla (Photo: KYAW ZWA MOE/THE IRRAWADDY)

Than Hla, 63, is a square-jawed man with eyes that light up when he talks about his many battles with “the enemy”—Burmese government troops. But his real claim to fame among residents of the Umpiem Mai refugee camp is that he has spent nearly as many years behind bars as the former South African president, who was imprisoned for 27 years for leading the struggle against Apartheid.

In Than Hla’s case, it was his 20-year career as a soldier for the Karen National Union (KNU) that landed him in prison. He joined the KNU when he was just 16, leaving his village in the Irrawaddy delta for a life of warfare. He can recall many battles, but the one he remembers most vividly was his last, fought in 1983 in the Pegu Yoma mountain range, where he was one of 60 rebels who finally succumbed to the Burmese army’s “four cuts” strategy, depriving them of food, funding, recruits and information.

Even though they had been tracked down by 10 Burmese army battalions, he insists that they could have kept fighting. “But we had nothing to eat, not even salt,” he said.

The captured KNU troops were sentenced to death or life imprisonment. Than Hla and his father-in-law were among those singled out for execution, but in 1989 this was commuted to life imprisonment under a general amnesty. His father-in-law eventually died behind bars, but Than Hla was released in 2005, after serving nearly 23 years.

Although most of his fellow refugees know him as one of Burma’s longest-serving political prisoners, it is clear that he sees himself in a different light. He still believes that the fight against military rule must go on, despite the junta’s claim that it is moving toward democracy.

“I support all methods that are used against the military regime,” he said. “Personally, I believe in armed struggle. If my knees were good, I would fight again.”

Zay Yar Nanda, the Boy Breadwinner

Zay Latt (left) and Zay Yar Nanda (Photo: KYAW ZWA MOE/THE IRRAWADDY)

When Zay Yar Nanda was 13, his father, Zay Latt, told his mother that he was going to take their children to Shwedagon Pagoda and Happy World, a popular amusement park in Rangoon. Zay Yar Nanda and his 4-year-old sister enjoyed the outing, but it didn’t end at a fun park. After a grueling journey through eastern Burma, they found themselves in a foreign country, in the Thai border town of Mae Sot.