Win Tin

Myanmars conscience
Win Tin, a Burmese journalist and political activist, died on April 21st, aged 85
May 3rd 2014 | From the print edition
IN SEPTEMBER 2008, as hundreds of prisoners
were let out of Insein jail in Myanmars former
capital, Yangon, one small, elderly, wavy-haired
figure continued to stand by the gates. He had not
changed into civvies, or taken his things; he still
wore his blue prison shirt. Win Tin was refusing to
take part in the amnesty, arranged by Myanmars
military regime, on principle. If he accepted it, that
implied he also accepted the charges he had first been locked up for almost 20 years before, mostly
opposition activism and satires against the regime in his bestselling newspaper, the Hanthawaddy
Daily. The petty criminals who raced past him were expected not to misbehave again. He was
different, and ill as he waswith a dozen complaints left untreated in prisonhe intended to
misbehave just as he had before. Only when he had made that point clear to the warders, as
evening fell, did he walk away. He was still wearing the blue shirt.
In prison, all those years, nothing had stopped him trying to write. What else should a journalist
do? He earned another five-year stint for having a pencil and paper in his cell, and writing a letter
of protest with them. He got another seven for assembling and smuggling out to the UN
rapporteur, in 1995, details about human-rights abuses in Insein, editing them secretly in the
darkest corner of his cell. He wrote regularly for the inhouse, single-copy prison magazine.
Deprived of his pencil, he befriended a cat which shed a few hairs when he stroked it; these, bound
with paste made of pounded brick and water, made passable red crayons, with which to write on
the wall
As long as the black stripes
on the yellow background
are painted vividly enough,
the tiger is still a tiger
Younger prisoners called him Ba Ba, Uncle, and would send him philosophical or political
questions scratched with old nails on pieces of plastic bags. He would scratch whatever answers he
knew. For he spent most of his time in isolation, sometimes in the Dog Cell where the Alsatians
were kept, curled in a small cage on a bamboo mat on concrete, deprived of sleep by the animals
fighting. Regular beatings smashed his teeth out, leaving him to chew the coarse prison rice with
his gums. Yet nothing curbed his appetite for words, books and simple information. At a glimpse
of a face he would cry, Any news today?, so that Mr Any News became his nickname with the
guards.
Every year he was invited to make peace with the regime. He always refused, though with a
courteous smile. General Ne Win had tried to be friends before he went to jail, inviting him to
dinner and so forth, but he was unswayed. In 1991 they took him from jail to show him round an
exhibition which had, as its motto, Myanmar is strong if the army is strong. He was even less
swayed. The place for soldiers was in barracks. They could not run countries. Since Ne Wins coup
in 1962 that had brought the generals to power, and especially after the brutal suppression of a
popular uprising in 1988, they had trampled all the freedoms of the Burmese people. Soon after his
release the army had begun to liberalise, to allow opposition newspapers and parties and, in 2010,
elections. But he trusted none of it. He demanded a wholesale apology and wanted them gone.
Fried eels and football
This marked a distinct difference from his long-time ally, Aung San Suu Kyi. Though his life up to
then had been spent editing and publishing newspapers, he had persuaded her in 1988 to found,
with him, the National League for Democracy (NLD). He was nearly 60, and his own paper had
just been shut down. Within the party he was known as Saya, Sage, and the regime assumed he
was Miss Suu Kyis puppet master, but he did not see himself as a politician. To the extent he was,
he was the antithesis of her cool, aloof, rather aristocratic approach: a man of the people, a
traders son, naturally humble, a gregarious enjoyer of sausages, fried eels and Champions League
football; and a complete non-compromiser.
Unbendingly, he refused to play the armys game. In 2010 the NLD boycotted the elections; Win
Tin thought it should do the same in the by-elections of 2012, even though it won nearly all the
seats it contested. For him, Miss Suu Kyi was too soft and much too pro-establishment. Her
father, after all, had been both the hero of independence and the founder of the Burmese army.
She negotiated with the generals, where he never would, and she was revered by party members
in a way he thought bad for democracy. He was no fan of violent opposition himself; that, he said,
was not the Burmese way. But he made no secret of trying to find another figurehead, someone
younger, to replace her.
Since he had never married, and had lost all his property while in prison, he spent his last years in
a two-room cabin in the garden of a friend. It was stuffed with books and ever open to visitors,
but those who called would find him still in a blue prisoners shirt. He wore no other sort. For
despite the reforms and the lifting of Western sanctions, the generals had not yet apologised and
Myanmar was not yet free. In his own words, therefore, I decline my release, /I am prepared to
stay.
From the print edition: Obituary