Interviews with Zin Mar Aung

In our society there is no proper civil society. Most of the civil society in Burma is just only charity-based organizations, not actually need-based organization. They do not step into the rights-based organization. That is what I would like to change, you know? If the civil society would like to support democratic changes, they need be – just only need-based organizations are not enough. So we try to change the idea of the existing civil society to move from need-based to right-based civil society organization.

Actually, we base our organization inside the American Center. [A library at the U.S. Embassy in Rangoon] At that time, outside the American center, we do not do our activities freely. So that’s why our activists are based at the American Center. Actually, the biggest support is moral support, and also, financial [support] is still difficult to accept and not just because of our organization’s capacity or because of the banking system or something like that, but because of the government policy. The government does not accept the foreign monies [going to] the civil society and the activists.

They always try to follow up you know, if someone’s or some organization accepting foreign support. They are always ready to blame and, you know, these organizations and these people politically, you know, are trying to disgrace this person and organization. I believe that it helped a lot, because, you know, now the current President Thein Sein government seriously be searching for, you know, the way to lift the [international] sanctions. [Thein Sein is a former military officer who has been President of Burma since 2011.

From 2007 to 2011, he was the Prime Minister of Burma.] What is really needed is to lift the sanctions, and the sanction is really effective to the military and government and that really supports our democratic movement. Now a lot of new civil society organizations are emerging. And they try to get the opportunity during the transition period they’re trying to step forward from needs-based to rights-based, so education, regarding education, women’s organizations and also the peace, regarding the organizations that are working for the peace process, and especially education and women’s organizations are still emerging. That is a good thing.

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.