Interviews with Khin Lay

Of course, this was one of the regular activities [the primary opposition National League for Democracy’s (NLD) book club] for the youth because we usually did it twice a month, so – for particular books, you know, they announced – the organizer announced that next week they were going to discuss about a specific book. They will give the name and title and we read the book and after the – on the book club day, we discuss the books. And moreover, we discussed about the present political situation related to the book and – so we can exchange our experience and news and information and we can exchange our opinions about the present situation, not only from the book but also in the outside.

So this is one of the regular activities of the NLD youth movement. And again, there was also lecture program, presentations we called. Presentation – there was a senior NLD member. They gave presentations to the young people. So we listened to their presentation, and after that we asked the questions that we can’t understand and we didn’t know the history of our country that like that, there was a section.

We have learned a lot from our lectures, NLD’s headquarters usually makes them regular activities. So we learned a lot about such things, ANC [African National Congress – a South African liberation movement that has governed the country since its transition to democracy in 1994], South Africa, Nelson Mandela [a South African anti-apartheid revolutionary and politician who served as President of South Africa from 1994-1999]. And also The Lady [a nickname for Aung San Suu Kyi] frequently mentioned Nelson Mandela and Vaclav Havel [a playwright and poet who played a leading role in bringing an end to Communist rule in Czechoslovakia. Havel served as the last president of Czechoslovakia 1989–92 and the first president of the Czech Republic 1993–2003] and Martin Luther King Jr. [a prominent African-American civil rights leader].

So we have heard a lot about their movement. And also we have learned from the books that we – I like history books, so we have learned a lot from the histories and also Mahatma Gandhi [the leader of India’s independence movement who inspired nonviolent movements for civil rights and freedom worldwide]. There are many movies about Mahatma Gandhi or, yes. But frankly speaking, we just practice by ourselves. We learn from our own experience, but we have – you know – in a book club, we discuss about such kind of topics and books and there are some translations of books about Martin Luther King or Nelson Mandela or many other people, very famous people.

So we can share the experience – we can share information and we can learn about them through the book club and book reading club. So on that, we keep going forward. But frankly speaking, we have never got any training or workshop from such kind of thing to do systematically.

Khin Lay is a Burmese civil society and political activist. She was born in Yangon in 1971.

She pursued a career in education, hoping to be a university professor. That ambition changed after Aung San Suu Kyi, the leader of Burma’s democracy movement, inspired Khin Lay to take an active role in freeing her country. In 1995, Khin Lay joined Aung San Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy (NLD).

As a member of NLD, Khin Lay endured constant surveillance by the regime. In 2000, she was arrested by authorities for her involvement with the party. After five days of interrogation in which she was blindfolded and deprived of sleep, Khin Lay spent four months in Insein Prison, a facility notorious for its deplorable conditions and use of torture. She was released in 2001.

More recently, Khin Lay has focused on strengthening women’s rights and building a more robust civil society. She founded the Triangle Women Support Group, an organization dedicated to empowering Burmese women, developing their political and professional skills, as well as encouraging greater participation in public life. She believes that fostering a new generation of strong, female leaders is a key component to Burma’s democratization.

https://www.facebook.com/TriangleWomenSupportGroup

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.