Myanmar says farewell to pro-democracy movement legend

By Joshua Carroll - Anadolu Agency

YANGON, Myanmar

Mourners flocked to a cemetery in Yangon, Myanmar’s main city, on Wednesday to mark the passing of one of the most iconic and well-loved leaders in the country's pro-democracy movement.

Win Tin, a journalist and poet who became the country’s longest serving political prisoner before being freed in 2008 under a general amnesty, died on Monday of kidney failure.

On Wednesday, thousands of people queued to walk past the anti-junta activist’s body as it lay on display alongside dozens of floral tributes. Notable figures attending the service included the U.S. Ambassador to Myanmar Derek Mitchell and Nobel peace prizewinner Aung San Suu Kyi, with whom Win Tin helped found the National League for Democracy (NLD) in 1988.  

Later, bodyguards at the site of Win Tin’s grave flanked Suu Kyi as pallbearers carried his coffin through jostling crowds.

“Win Tin’s spirit will forever be alive,” Robert Sann Aung, himself a former political prisoner, told the Anadolu Agency from the edge of the crowd. Like many others, he wore a blue prison vest, a tribute to Win Tin’s refusal to remove his prison clothes even after being freed.

The gesture was intended to draw attention to the country's remaining political prisoners, and to show that for many Myanmar is not yet free.

In the years following the start of a reform process in 2011, which among other things saw the majority of political prisoners freed and media censorship relaxed, Win Tin remained an outspoken critic of the nominally civilian government installed by the military.

He proved himself more radical and less certain of the benefits of compromising with the military than Suu Kyi, and was one of the only members of the NLD who dared publically criticize her.

“The NLD will be a little bit weak without him,” said Nay Sat Kyar, an activist, speaking to the Anadolu Agency outside the towering chimneys of the cemetery’s crematorium. “He was really strong.”

Aung San Suu Kyi has drawn criticism since she became an MP in 2012, less than two years after she was released from almost 15 years under house arrest. Her supporters were disappointed at her failure to speak out in defense of ethnic minorities who have faced attacks from extremists and government forces.

Kyaw Min, a Rohingya Muslim activist who said he had spoken recently with Win Tin about the plight of the persecuted minority, told the Anadolu Agency on Monday he found the NLD stalwart more sympathetic than other party members towards the Rohingya, who are deeply unpopular in Myanmar.   

Imprisoned in 1989 for his role in the pro-democracy movement, Win Tin spent 19 years refusing to buckle under torture and solitary confinement. He was forced to sleep in a dog kennel and beaten so badly on one occasion that he lost most of his teeth.

Guards refused to provide him with pen and paper during his detention, so he made makeshift ink out of brick dust and used it to write poems on his cell wall.

In his final years he lived frugally, giving away most of the money he received in donations to causes to help political prisoners and their families. He had no wife or children.

“He had very few possessions, only really his blue shirt,” NLD party member Nyan Aye told the Anadolu Agency on Monday, while reminiscing about the man who became a pro-democracy legend.

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