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Commentary
An artist’s rendition of Ma Nilar Thein (left), Ko Jimmy (heart) and Nay Kyi Min Yu.
By Naing Khit 1 September 2022
Wanting again, my strongest connections with the executed activist Ko Jimmy, his spouse Ma Nilar Thein and their younger daughter all got here at moments when their lives have been in peril. This solely grew to become obvious to me after the Myanmar junta executed him by hanging in July.
That is the story of that invisible connection, one which developed between us by way of years of mortal hazard.
Although I used to be unaware of it on the time, my first reference to the longer term couple happened by way of our overlapping incarceration in a infamous jail, referred to as Tharrawaddy, about 70 miles from Yangon, within the late Nineteen Nineties after we three have been political prisoners of the earlier army regime.
Whereas Ko Jimmy was detained within the compound housing cell blocks A and B, his future spouse Ma Nilar Thein was saved within the cell block for ladies prisoners in a separate compound reverse Ko Jimmy’s cell block. My cell block was close to the middle of the jail, far from theirs.
We didn’t know one another on the time of our detention, and I didn’t meet them in jail, although we have been incarcerated in the identical facility for 2 years till I used to be launched. Nonetheless, we have been aware of one another by identify by way of mutual pals amongst activists and political prisoners.
“The partitions have ears,” is a standard saying amongst prisoners, expressing the truth that nothing is hid in jail. After all, it applies equally to each heart-wrenching and fantastic tales. Even earlier than my launch, a love story with Ko Jimmy and Ma Nilar Thein at its heart penetrated the partitions of the jail into our cells. With out having an opportunity to this point in individual, the 2 political prisoners courted one another by way of secret notes handed from one cell to a different.
After my launch in late 1999, they have been each detained there for a number of extra years. Quickly after they have been launched in 2005, the 2 activists married.
That was the primary chapter within the story of our connection, although the bond was not but a acutely aware one. It was a time of shared hazard, throughout which every of us served prolonged phrases of imprisonment within the cells of the merciless regime of that day, led by former dictator Than Shwe, the grasp of present junta chief Min Aung Hlaing.
Hazard returns
Eight years later, in 2007, I reestablished contact with Ma Nilar Thein. This time, her younger household was in peril. Her husband Ko Jimmy had simply been arrested for the second time, and he or she was now a fugitive with a worth on her head, in hiding from the regime forces; their 4-month-old daughter was left parentless. Throughout these years, I used to be a journalist in exile, primarily overlaying our nation’s political points.
The couple’s “crime” was their main position within the Saffron Revolution led by Buddhist monks in Yangon and different cities. Ko Jimmy and dozens of different main activists have been arrested when, in a well-known sample, the peaceable demonstrations have been crushed by the regime.
Worldwide media and foreign-based Myanmar media lined the Saffron Revolution and the regime’s brutal crackdown, which led to the deaths of quite a lot of protesters, together with Japanese photographer Kenji Nagai in downtown Yangon.
I additionally lined the protests. Repeatedly, I phoned Ma Nilar Thein and different activists in hiding. Having realized of the hazard she and her child daughter have been in, I made a decision to put in writing a narrative that may describe her expertise within the context of a broader account of the numerous courageous ladies like her who’ve performed vital roles within the nation’s independence wrestle, from the early twentieth century to the anti-military dictatorship motion of that point.
An “interior voice” inside me appeared to push me past my skilled instincts, and to transcend mere information reporting to doc her wrestle, together with the lives of her husband and daughter.
After speaking to her over the telephone many occasions, I opened the story with an account of her scenario in September 2007, as follows:
Because the mom of a four-month-old child, Ma Nilar Thein needs to be at residence now, caring for her little daughter. As a substitute, she’s a fugitive with a worth on her head, in hiding from Myanmar regime forces determined to silence her and different outspoken activists.
For Ma Nilar Thein, 35, it was a transparent alternative—whether or not to stay silent within the pursuits of her household or to hitch within the motion to deliver democracy to Myanmar, realizing she risked jail and separation from her child.
She took the second plan of action, believing that in the long term it will profit her daughter way over if she had executed nothing. By working for democratic change in Myanmar, she hoped to “deliver a couple of vivid future for my daughter,” Ma Nilar Thein advised me from her hiding place.
“Provided that we finish this dangerous system will the way forward for Myanmar individuals, together with my daughter’s, be vivid,” she mentioned. “I really like my daughter. I needed to depart her, however I imagine she is going to later perceive why.”
She additionally talked about her political convictions and recounted the story of her first arrest.
Throughout a 1996 demonstration, she slapped a Yangon police chief as he issued repeated orders to his subordinates to beat her. The law enforcement officials at first ignored the order, however when she slapped the police chief she was thrown right into a car and pushed away to jail. She was sentenced to 3 years’ imprisonment for slapping the police chief and to an extra seven for her political actions. Later she was transferred to Tharrawaddy Jail, the place we have been detained.
Her wrestle for a simply society is rooted in her expertise of the 1988 rebellion, when she witnessed authorities troopers kill, beat and arrest demonstrators outdoors her Yangon residence.
“I nonetheless hear these voices in my ears and see these scenes in my thoughts,” she advised me. “I desperately need to eliminate this evil system.”
In January 2008, 4 months after I wrote my first story about her, I felt that the worldwide group and its media had completely forgotten about her, Ko Jimmy and all the different political prisoners whose lives have been in such hazard. My frustration drove me to put in writing one other story about her, hoping that giving her a global highlight would make it more durable for the regime to arrest Ma Nilar Thein and different activists in hiding, and put strain on it to launch Ko Jimmy and different political prisoners.
Within the opening strains of that story I made no effort to disguise my impatience:
Who remembers her now? Really, she was well-known about 4 months in the past. However right now few appear to recollect her. 4 months is a very long time in right now’s fast-moving world.
Nilar Thein’s 9-month-old daughter, Nay Kyi Min Yu, has been dwelling together with her grandparents. Her grandparents say she is doing properly, however she doesn’t expertise the protecting, loving kindness of her dad and mom.
The daughter is taken to the jail sometimes to go to her father. However she hasn’t touched her mom prior to now months.
In the end, nonetheless, it appeared that nobody cared.
Not one of the insurance policies and instruments dropped at bear by the United Nations and the USA had any impact—they didn’t change the regime; didn’t persuade the ruling generals to carry a dialogue with detained chief Daw Aung San Suu Kyi and different key stakeholders; they didn’t even get the regime to launch political prisoners and finish its oppression.
At the moment, Newsweek journal interviewed then-UN Particular Envoy to Myanmar Ibrahim Gambari. I quoted his interview in my story: “The UN shouldn’t be within the enterprise of fixing regimes.” On the discharge of political prisoners, he mentioned solely: “The discharge of Aung San Suu Kyi and the opposite political prisoners is lengthy overdue.” How about the potential for political reconciliation with the regime? He responded merely: “It’s lengthy overdue.”
Political strain, together with sanctions, imposed by the West and led by the US, have been additionally in useless. Pissed off with the worldwide group, I completed the story as follows:
The US is the strongest critic of the Myanmar regime and just lately it imposed new sanctions focused on the generals, their households and enterprise cronies. But it surely doesn’t have any actual means to alter the regime or open its prisons or get the generals to sit down down and discuss to opposition and ethnic leaders. It may be one other story if Myanmar have been within the Center East, maybe.
So, how can Ma Nilar Thein and the Myanmar individuals be saved?
You may think about just one one that may save Ma Nilar Thein—Rambo.
It was true. Nobody may rescue her. After one other 9 months in hiding she was lastly arrested.
Like many different activists, each she and her husband acquired draconian sentences: 65 years in jail. Whereas Ko Jimmy was despatched to a unique jail, Ma Nilar Thein was despatched again to Tharrawaddy. Their daughter was left together with her grandparents and different relations.
Over the subsequent 4 years, Myanmar’s political panorama modified, in accordance with a roadmap designed by the army regime. Months after the regime remodeled itself right into a so-called civilian authorities led by ex-generals in 2011, the couple have been launched along with different political prisoners.
“I can be very blissful to satisfy my household,” Ma Nilar Thein advised me over the telephone quickly after she stepped out of jail on Jan. 13, 2012. On the time, her household and her daughter, now nearly 5, have been on the way in which to greet her, and Ko Jimmy was within the strategy of being launched from Taunggyi Jail in Shan State.
For the subsequent 9 years, the couple have been fairly lively politically and socially, enjoying a outstanding position as main activists. With different political activists they helped kind a non-profit group, the 88 Technology Peace and Open Society.
That interval, lasting almost a decade, was the “freest” time Myanmar individuals had skilled because the army’s first coup in 1962, regardless of the generals’ continued management over key political and safety issues. In 2016, after 54 years of army rule, the Nationwide League for Democracy fashioned the nation’s first civilian authorities since 1962. However this civilian administration may solely govern inside the constraints imposed by the undemocratic 2008 Structure drafted by the earlier army regime.
By this time I used to be again within the nation. Sometimes throughout these years, I might cross paths with Ko Jimmy and Ma Nilar Thein. Generally Ko Jimmy and I have been invited to hitch conferences with overseas dignitaries and diplomats over lunch or dinner to share our views on the nation’s political affairs. We might simply change transient greetings—the identical went for Ma Nilar Thein. We didn’t cease and take the time to recall our previous “connections”. There didn’t appear to be any urgent want to take action: no severe risks have been imminent.
None of us may have recognized that this era of relative freedom and safety was only a transient interlude.
Time to reconnect
Fourteen years after I wrote that collection of tales about Ma Nilar Thein and her household, the connection was reestablished—a lethal hazard had arisen.
The entire nation—nearly its total inhabitants—has been in peril since the latest army coup on Feb. 1, 2021. The principle perpetrator is coup maker and army chief Min Aung Hlaing. He’s the enemy of the state and of the individuals. His enemies are the greater than 80 p.c of voters who solid their ballots for the NLD within the 2020 election—in different phrases, an enormous majority of the inhabitants.
Ko Jimmy, Ma Nilar Thein and all of us who’ve been proactive in our opposition to the coup and the army dictatorship are his fundamental targets. Ko Jimmy was one amongst hundreds of activists and protesters arrested after the coup. In January 2022, he was one among greater than 100 prisoners sentenced to loss of life. Whereas this was a dramatic improvement, there was no explicit motive to imagine that he would really be put to loss of life. The earlier army regime, brutal because it was, had stopped finishing up the executions of condemned political prisoners a long time earlier.
Many people merely assumed that this sample would proceed.
However when the junta introduced on June 3 that its chief Min Aung Hlaing had ordered that the execution of Ko Jimmy, former lawmaker Ko Phyo Zeya Thaw and two different anti-regime protesters ought to proceed, I grew to become satisfied that Min Aung Hlaing was severe about killing them.
The “interior voice” I heard then was even stronger than the one I heard after I wrote about his fugitive spouse, Ma Nilar Thein, after the Saffron Revolution.
It instantly prompted me to put in writing this story: Myanmar’s Junta Appears Critical About Executing Main Activists. Can We Cease It?
In it, I attempted to elucidate how severe I believed Min Aung Hlaing was about executing the activists, and what kind of response we must always count on from anti-regime resistance forces, and even from the general public, in the event that they have been killed. I urged the whole worldwide group to take efficient steps to stop Ko Jimmy and the remaining from being killed. I criticized the US and the UN for failing to do greater than challenge statements to “condemn” the junta’s order.
The entire intention of that story was to save lots of Ko Jimmy, Ko Phyo Zeya Thaw and two different condemned prisoners, Ko Hla Myo Aung and Ko Aung Thura Zaw.
Feeling a restlessness in my soul, I wrote one other story one week later warning the junta that if it killed the prisoners it will face an unprecedented all-out battle from the resistance forces, in addition to extra worldwide strain. I urged Min Aung Hlaing to revise his execution orders.
After studying that a lot of the executions of political prisoners in Myanmar’s historical past have been performed on Saturdays, each Saturday following the junta chief’s execution order introduced renewed dread. Within the story, I additionally warned that it was possible their executions would come on a Saturday.
Awfully, all of my fears have been realized. I might give something to have been incorrect.
On Saturday, July 23, Ko Jimmy and Ko Phyo Zeya Thaw have been executed. The 2 others have been executed the subsequent day.
Nobody may save Ko Jimmy and his comrades from the gallows. On that day, the nation cried for them.
However I imagine they died nice deaths. I couldn’t assist writing about it in one other story, Myanmar Is the Nation of Nice Deaths.
It begins: They died actually nice deaths, as a result of they gave their lives: for the individuals, with a view to restore their rights and dignity; for the nation, to finish the horrific army dictatorship; and for future generations, to rebuild their battered nation.
Ko Jimmy was destined to stay an amazing life through which he fought for the individuals. As a 19-year-old pupil, he began his mission to free Myanmar from its evil rulers. On the age of 53, he fell as a freedom fighter. He waged an amazing struggle for his complete life; and he died an amazing loss of life.
His spouse Ma Nilar Thein is as sturdy as he was. For myself, I used to be not sturdy sufficient to speak to her this time, although I managed to channel my considerations and ideas about Ko Jimmy, and my continued sense of “connection” with the couple, right into a collection of analyses.
Even after the execution of her husband, Ma Nilar Thein’s frequent posts on social media present that the sturdy dedication to rid Myanmar of the “dangerous system”, which she advised me of 15 years in the past from her hiding place, survives.
I can nonetheless recall her actual phrases: “Provided that we finish this dangerous system will the way forward for Myanmar individuals, together with my daughter’s, be vivid… I really like my daughter. I needed to depart her, however I imagine she is going to later perceive why.”
I imagine that, if I requested her about this now, she would repeat these phrases with even stronger willpower for her now 15-year-old daughter and her individuals.
Naing Khit is a commentator on political affairs.
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