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Following the killing of the famend activist whereas she allegedly tried to flee junta custody, her household and comrades keep in mind a girl who died preventing “the final battle” in opposition to navy dictatorship.
By HEIN THAR | FRONTIER
Their dad and mom picked lovely names. The 2 sisters, Nobel Aye and Nightingale, have been named after Alfred Nobel and Florence Nightingale, each pioneers of their fields. However Common Ne Win’s regime was not one to reward creativity. After they first enrolled in public faculties, they have been informed to alter their uncommon names, which sounded Christian and overseas.
So, the elder sister grew to become Hnin Could Aung, however throughout the nation she is remembered and mourned as Nobel Aye, considered one of Myanmar’s bravest activists, who gave her life for the revolution.
Like so many others who’ve stood up in opposition to the navy, her life ended brutally. Her brother, Ko Htet Myat, informed Frontier that he confirmed with an eyewitness that she was dragged, coated in blood, below a tree in Bago Area’s Waw Township, the place she was executed by safety forces.
The regime has not formally confirmed her loss of life or returned her physique, leaving family members in limbo, regardless of various resistance sources saying she’s been killed.
Noble beginnings
Nobel Aye was born on October 11, 1975, a Saturday, the eldest of 4 siblings. In accordance with conventional Myanmar beliefs, an eldest little one born on a Saturday – the day of the dragon – is especially strong-willed and troublesome to manage.
She had a revolutionary pedigree. Her father, U Thet Htun Aung, was the son of a comparatively affluent farm proprietor within the Ayeyarwady delta and joined the Communist insurgency that took root there shortly after independence in 1948.
Her mom, Daw Aye Myint Than, would go on to affix the 1988 rebellion in opposition to navy rule, and led the Thingangyun Township chapter of the Nationwide League for Democracy after the occasion was based the identical 12 months.
They married round 1970 and settled in Yangon, the place Nobel Aye and Nightingale have been born. However Thet Htun Aung left his spouse for the monkhood, the place he remained till he died in 1985. Aye Myint Than remarried in 1980, giving delivery to 2 extra sons. One in every of them, Htet Myat, born in 1981, recounted this household historical past from the Thai border with Myanmar, the place he works for a human rights organisation.
Aye Myint Than, then a preferred tutor, sheltered college students fleeing the navy’s crackdown on the 1988 protests, earlier than they left Yangon for the mountainous borderlands to affix armed teams.
“Because the days of ’88, my mom was cherished and revered by pupil activists as if she was their very own mom,” Htet Myat stated. “The underground resistance was conversant in our household since we have been younger.”
Htet Myat added that Nobel Aye shortly grew to become her mom’s closest ally. In the course of the 1990 election, when she was simply 15 years previous and nonetheless in highschool, Nobel Aye joined her mom in campaigning for the NLD. However after the pro-democracy occasion gained a landslide victory, the navy refused to honour the outcomes. The household supported the creation of the Committee Representing the Folks’s Parliament, which shaped a government-in-exile.
In 1998 mom and daughter have been arrested of their residence. Aye Myint Than was sentenced to 21 years and despatched to Myaungmya Jail in Ayeyarwady Area. Her gravest crime was to repeat and distribute NLD chief Daw Aung San Suu Kyi’s seminal ebook Freedom from Worry. Nobel Aye obtained a fair heftier jail time period of 42 years for taking part in pupil protests in 1996, and for being a member of banned organisation the All Burma Federation of Scholar Unions. As is typical, she was separated from her mom and despatched tons of of kilometres north to Myingyan Jail in Mandalay Area.
Htet Myat stated earlier than his sister’s arrest, she typically requested him to assist cover anti-junta leaflets within the rafters of their residence or below Buddha statues – one thing he barely understood on the time.
Daw Zin Mar Aung, overseas minister for the Nationwide Unity Authorities, a parallel administration appointed by elected lawmakers deposed within the 2021 coup, has spent the final three years shuttling all over the world assembly with politicians and diplomats.
However in 1996, she too was an nameless pupil hoping for change in Myanmar. She first met Nobel Aye at Yangon’s iconic Shwedagon Pagoda, the place a bunch of underground activists gathered on a Saturday, wearing white and blue to determine one another.
“Nobel arrived in a rush; she stated was late as a result of she was cooking for her siblings at residence,” Zin Mar Aung recalled their first assembly to Frontier. By December of that 12 months, they have been the 2 major leaders of the scholars’ motion at Dagon College.
Trials and tribulations
However by 1998, the political scenario had deteriorated. Aung San Suu Kyi and the NLD had issued an ultimatum, demanding that the junta honour the outcomes of the 1990 election by August 21.
This led to a tense political standoff, and underground activists tried to organise one other mass rebellion. In an age of restricted expertise, this meant giving speeches and distributing pamphlets in public locations, however Nobel Aye and Zin Mar Aung have been shortly recognized and captured. They have been despatched to the Aung Tha Pyae interrogation centre in Yangon’s Mayangone Township. Beneath the brutal situations of the centre, they went from being comrades to finest pals.
“Every particular person reacts in a different way below interrogation,” stated Zin Mar Aung. “Some calmly reply what they should reply. Some are cussed and hold their mouths shut. The primary factor is that you just don’t need anyone else to be arrested due to your solutions. Nobel Aye was essentially the most strong-willed particular person I ever met.”
She sat in silence, considering for a short time, earlier than including, “Nobel was like fireplace when she confronted the dictator, however she was as cool as water along with her pals.”
Zin Mar Aung recalled in the future when she heard banging and shouting from the room the place Nobel Aye was being questioned, and feared she was being tortured. When Nobel Aye was returned to their shared name three days later, Zin Mar Aung requested if she had been crushed.
“No, my pal, I used to be beating the desk,” Nobel Aye stated with amusing.
She defined that a military main had made a crude joke in regards to the acronym for ABFSU, Ba Ka Tha in Burmese, which sounds just like the phrase for a pregnant lady.
“Main, use language that might be applicable to make use of together with your kids,” she reprimanded him after slamming the desk. As a punishment, she was ordered to face up with out meals or water for 3 days.
After round two weeks within the interrogation centre, Nobel Aye was transferred to Myingyan Jail, in Myanmar’s searing sizzling Dry Zone, which grew to become notorious for the abuse meted out to political prisoners. Inmates stated they have been compelled to put on ankle chains always, even whereas doing guide labour like breaking apart massive rocks, and have been repeatedly crushed or subjected to electrical shocks.
“At the moment, in 1998, Nobel Aye was the one feminine political prisoner within the jail,” stated one other activist who was detained there on the time, speaking to Frontier on the situation of anonymity. “We have been all struggling to remain alive and proud to have the ability to survive there. However Ma Nobel, she was all the time the hardest and most strong-willed amongst us. Even the strongest males have been shocked by her.”
However whereas she was fierce within the face of adversity, she was supportive and galvanizing to these round her. The previous prisoner mirrored on a remark Nobel Aye made that had caught with him ever since.
“Our lives belong to us whereas we’re alive, however our lives belong to historical past eternally.”
Whereas Nobel Aye was battling harsh situations in jail, her household was struggling to get by in Yangon. Her siblings stopped going to high school as a result of they refused to make use of navy authorities providers, and so they have been toiling to scrape collectively sufficient cash to ship meals and provisions to the 2 prisons each different week.
“Our household was like grass on the bottom that had been pressed down by so many toes,” Htet Myat stated.
In these onerous instances, Htet Myat’s father U Tin Maung Aye was a rock for the household. He went across the metropolis promoting candles and charcoal to lift cash to ship meals to his spouse and step-daughter, whereas educating the opposite kids to not really feel bitter about their hardship.
“He was an actual hero, the hero behind the curtains that no person might see, a person who confronted all of those troubles with solely braveness and hope,” Htet Myat stated.
In the meantime, a cloud of surveillance and isolation hung over the home.
“The junta-appointed ward chief put a chair in entrance of our home and all the time watched and reported on us to navy intelligence,” Htet Myat stated. “Typically once I awoke early within the morning, even when nobody was current, that chair was all the time there.”
The fixed monitoring meant different households averted them like a curse, and Htet Myat stated he grew up with few pals. In 2002, he tried to get a job at a pc service store in downtown Yangon, however was fired after solely in the future as a result of navy intelligence threatened his employer.
The liberty to battle once more
In 2005, Nobel Aye and her mom have been launched in a mass amnesty, however the household’s pleasure was short-lived. Aye Myint Than quickly suffered a stroke, possible linked to her harsh remedy in jail.
However Nobel Aye’s spirit was not damaged. In 2007, the navy junta ended gas subsidies, pushing tens of millions of already poor residents to the brink. Many keep in mind the next protests, dubbed the Saffron Revolution, as a monk-led rebellion in opposition to navy rule. However fewer recall that the seeds have been planted by activists like Nobel Aye, who took to the streets to evangelise messages of resistance.
She was detained once more that August, this time sentenced to 11 years in jail. She was nonetheless in Monywa Jail in Sagaing Area when the navy launched its failed democratic transition. Following an election boycotted by the NLD in 2010, the dictator Senior Common Than Shwe handed energy to former common U Thein Sein.
Quickly after, senior members of the nominally civilian authorities, together with the vice chairman, publicly insisted there have been no political prisoners in Myanmar. This drew a well-known rebuke from Nobel Aye within the type of a handwritten be aware from jail.
“Each imprisonments have been as a result of my evaluation, discussions and recommendations in regards to the political scenario in Burma. I used to be and stay imprisoned for these actions. Due to this fact, I, Hnin Could Aung aka Nobel Aye… am a political prisoner,” she wrote.
For this, she was punished with solitary confinement and a ban on guests. By then, Nobel Aye had been separated from not simply her household, however from the love of her life, Ko Tin Aye, one other well-known pupil activist.
“He taught me the fundamentals of political activism,” stated Ko Min Thwe Thit, former president of the ABFSU, who considers Tin Aye his mentor. This included suggestions for avoiding arrest, like not sporting crimson or black shirts, colors related to the NLD and radical protesters.
“Whenever you sit at a teashop, all the time face the door,” he added. Should you’re ready for anyone delicate and so they don’t arrive on time, transfer to a different location from the place you may observe the meant assembly level.
In 2008, Tin Aye moved to the Thai border city of Mae Sot, the place was reunited with Nobel Aye after she was launched from jail in 2012. They married the next 12 months and have since grow to be icons of romance and resistance.
“The youthful technology talks fondly about their love, and the way in which the destiny of politicians is instantly associated to the destiny of the nation,” stated Min Thwe Thit. “We all the time say that each of them put their non-public lives to the aspect and gambled their future on the nation.”
With the nation opening up, the pair returned to Myanmar in 2014 as members of the left-wing Democratic Social gathering for a New Society. Zin Mar Aung, who was elected to parliament for the NLD in 2015 and 2020, stated Nobel Aye was extra radical, a dedicated socialist.
A glimmer of hope
In February 2021, the navy killed hopes of a gradual transition to democracy by seizing energy and imprisoning civilian leaders together with Aung San Suu Kyi. Many mourned the lack of the brand new, however restricted, freedoms of the previous decade. However others like Nobel Aye, who had been preventing for extra radical change for many years, noticed a chance within the mass motion sparked by the coup.
“This sort of revolutionary rebellion involving the complete public is the sort of factor we political activists all the time dreamed of,” stated Min Thwe Thit.
“I chatted with Ma Nobel quite a bit [after the coup]. She was very excited in regards to the scenario, repeatedly saying this have to be the ultimate battle. It’s the final revolution that can finish dictatorship in Myanmar, in order that the subsequent technology doesn’t have a life like theirs, the place their youths are wasted in jail.”
Nobel Aye grew to become an early chief of the Common Strike Coordination Physique, which helped organise avenue protests and strikes. She stood with the folks on the frontlines in Yangon when, after a number of weeks of demonstrations, the navy started to crack down.
The regime went on to slaughter tons of of protesters, giving delivery to an armed resistance motion. From right here, the story turns into murkier as Nobel Aye fled underground. Some pals stated she went to Bago Area, however by 2022 had left for Sagaing Area. Others say she even made it to Rakhine State.
However in January this 12 months, pro-military media shops reported that she and one other activist have been arrested in japanese Bago’s Waw Township with a automobile filled with weapons, bullets and explosives.
The story went that two males in a separate automobile loaded with weapons have been stopped earlier at a regime checkpoint. They confessed that Nobel Aye and Ko Lay Khwin organised the cargo and would quickly be passing by way of the identical checkpoint.
In February, information broke that Nobel Aye and the opposite activist have been each shot lifeless by regime troopers, allegedly for attempting to flee whereas being transported from the Waw Township Courtroom again to an interrogation centre. Htet Myat referred to as the township courtroom and Bago District police workplace to verify the information however stated they refused to present him solutions. Lastly, he managed to trace down some locals who informed him over the telephone that they witnessed the killings within the township’s Kyaik Hla village.
The household has not but seen Nobel Aye’s physique, and the junta nonetheless hasn’t launched any information about her loss of life or contacted the household. The Waw Township Courtroom and township police division each informed Frontier they wouldn’t converse to the media.
The murky circumstances of the arrest and killing have led some to imagine she was entrapped; the navy knew she was coming and planted weapons in her automobile. Some additionally doubt her supposed escape try.
Regardless of the dearth of any direct proof, advocates of those theories level to a sample of behaviour by the junta.
Ko Thike Tun Oo, a spokesperson for the Political Prisoners Community Myanmar, shaped after the coup, stated it’s frequent for the regime to extrajudicially execute political prisoners after which accuse them of attempting to flee after the actual fact. Dozens of political prisoners have gone lacking throughout suspicious transfers.
A former political prisoner himself, Thike Tun Oo stated any high-profile prisoner can be escorted by an armed guard whereas being handcuffed and sporting ankle chains, making escape practically unimaginable.
Nevertheless it does appear Nobel Aye, like many different once-peaceful activists, had embraced the armed wrestle earlier than her loss of life.
In July 2022, the navy executed Phyo Zeyar Thaw and Ko Jimmy, an NLD parliamentarian and outstanding political activist respectively, accused of orchestrating armed resistance in Yangon. Quickly after the executions, Min Thwe Thit obtained a name from Nobel Aye. “She stated she’s going to help this warfare in any respect prices. She stated she’s going to do it even when she has to pay along with her life,” he recalled.
Zin Mar Aung informed Frontier that because the NUG’s minister of overseas affairs, she’s going to pursue justice by way of any means out there, however as a pal of Nobel Aye’s, she is damage past phrases.
“Now there gained’t be one other probability, we’ll by no means meet once more,” she stated, including that there are numerous different folks in Myanmar who can by no means hope to be reunited with their relations or pals. “I promise to do my responsibility for all those that endure this ache.”
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