Interviews with Zin Mar Aung

Just after 2010 general elections, the, let’s say, new government trying to make change. Actually, the changes we’re studying are from 2003, May, now the consequences are because of the seven-step road map they made in 2003, May. [Burma’s military seized power in a 1962 coup d’etat. The opposition National League for Democracy (NLD) won elections to a constitutional assembly in 1990, but the junta refused to recognize the results. A brief period of relative liberalization lasted from 2001 to 2003, when opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi was placed under house arrest and the activities of the NLD were severely restricted. In 2010, Aung San Suu Kyi was released and Burma held parliamentary elections, which were boycotted by the NLD. In 2012, the NLD participated in by-elections, winning 43 of the 46 seats at stake.]

Now during this period is the last step of their road map. So in 2009, the political situation is not like that. The military intelligence and also Special Branch followed me. And they try to get what we are doing and trying to make pressure. But after 2010 and ’11 and also currently after Daw Aung San Suu Kyi was released, the political spaces, the debate, you know, easier than before. [Aung San Suu Kyi is the leader of the main Burmese opposition party, the National League of Democracy [NLD]. She led the NLD to victory in the 1990 elections, but the military government ignored the results and put her under house arrest. She was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1991.] So we take this space and as our opportunity.

I think it is a little bit early to engage such the very highest level, the engagement. I support that some kinds of the official engagement should be, but for the highest level, the government official engagement is a little bit early. Because what I believe in, you need to approach the government to get more changes in the future. But we are not quite sure the changes are not reversible or not. We’re not sure yet. But the changes is – and the opening – we can see the opening. Currently the well-known political prisoners were released, including the Lady [Aung San Suu Kyi] and also the NLD is now in parliament.

And some kinds of media freedom, especially like the print media and domestic media get some kinds of freedom. And civil society organizations can work actively more than before, but even though they do not get registration, they can do more freely than before. We need to institutionalize these changes, not to reverse (them). And the problem is that the grassroots-level people do not benefit from these changes yet. So even though we as political activists know that what we are doing a little bit better and freer than before, the ordinary people, you know, the citizens, ordinary citizens do not benefit, do not get any benefits from these changes.

Zin Mar Aung is a Burmese civil society and political activist and a former prisoner of conscience. She was born in 1976 in Rangoon.

While a university student in the 1990s, Zin Mar Aung became active in the opposition to Burma’s military government. In 1998, she was arrested at a peaceful protest rally for reading a poem and statement calling on the military government to respect the results of elections. She was detained and convicted before a military tribunal, which did not permit her to be represented by an attorney. Zin Mar Aung was sentenced to 28 years in prison. She spent 11 years as a political prisoner, nearly nine years of which was in solitary confinement. In 2009, she was suddenly released from captivity and she resumed her civil society activities.

Zin Mar Aung has founded a number of civil society groups dealing with democratic development, women’s empowerment, ethnic tolerance, and providing assistance to former prisoners of conscience. The Rainfall group encourages greater women’s participation in public life and the Yangon School of Political Science educates young Burmese about politics and democracy.

In 2012, she was recognized by U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton as a recipient of the annual “International Women of Courage” award.

Burma, a Southeast Asian country with about 57 million people, is ruled by a military regime that seized power in 1962. Although the reformist National League for Democracy (NLD) won overwhelmingly in a 1990 election, the country’s military rulers ignored the results and arrested NLD leader Aung San Suu Kyi, who was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1991 “for her nonviolent struggle for democracy and human rights.” The military government held a referendum on a new constitution in 2008 and a parliamentary election in 2010, neither of which was regarded by international observers as free or fair, and both of which resulted in overwhelming majorities for pro-government positions and candidates. The military regime has committed widespread and systematic human rights violations, including extrajudicial killing, torture, rape, and denial of freedom of expression, association, assembly, and religion.

Throughout its existence, the regime has been at war with a number of Burma’s ethnic minority groups. Ethnic minority voters overwhelmingly supported the NLD in the 1990 election, and after the suppression of the democracy movement several of these groups continued or resumed armed resistance to the de facto government. Although the government signed cease-fire agreements with several of these groups ostensibly granting them autonomy within their respective regions, the Burmese military has used a range of brutal techniques, including the killing of civilians, forced labor, rape, and the destruction of homes, crops, and villages, in cease-fire zones as well as in areas where there is still armed resistance.

In 2007, as on several previous occasions, there were mass demonstrations throughout the country demanding freedom and democracy. The 2007 demonstrations were led by Buddhist monks and eventually became known as the “Saffron Revolution” after the color of the monks’ robes. The armed forces brutally suppressed these demonstrations—estimates of the number of protestors killed range from 31 to several thousand—and intensified popular dissatisfaction with the government by the killing, beating, and public humiliation of monks.

The nominally civilian government resulting from the 2010 election has been widely regarded as a façade for continuing military rule. However, in October 2011, the government released 206 of Burma’s estimated 2,000 prisoners of conscience. The next month, the government announced that it would soon release all remaining political prisoners. The NLD, which had declined to participate in the 2010 election, registered to participate in the next election and announced that Aung San Suu Kyi would be among the NLD candidates.

Although the military regime announced in 1989 that it had changed the English name of the country from Burma to “Myanmar,” the United States government and other international supporters of democracy in Burma have generally continued to call the country Burma because this is the name preferred by Aung San Suu Kyi and other democracy advocates who won the 1990 election.