Posted on 07/01/2005 10:26:24 AM PDT by LwinAungSoe
Amnesty International, International PEN, and Reporters without Borders (Reporters sans Frontieres) today urged the State Peace and Democracy Council (SPDC) to immediately and unconditionally release U Win Tin, a Burmese editor and National League for Democracy (NLD) advisor. He was arrested 16 years ago, on 4 July 1989, and is serving a 20 year prison sentence. He is Myanmar's longest serving prisoner of conscience.
In three weeks time Win Tin should be eligible for release with time off for good behaviour. He and other victims of abuses of the justice system, who should never have been imprisoned in the first place, must be released, immediately and without conditions.
Amnesty International and Reporters Without Borders have delivered petitions for his release to Myanmar (Burma) embassies in Paris and London and will be sending further petitions to Myanmar diplomatic representatives in Hong Kong.
U Win Tin has been imprisoned for the last 16 years on account of his peaceful political opposition to authorities. He has been denied basic rights, including the right to a fair trial, to writing materials and to humane prison conditions. His imprisonment highlights how the justice system in Myanmar has been misused in order to silence peaceful exercise of the right to freedom of expression.
U Win Tin was imprisoned because of his senior position in the National League for Democracy (NLD), and was sentenced to further years in prison for attempting to inform the United Nations of ongoing human rights violations in prisons in Myanmar. Authorities also accused him of writing a magazine and poems to be circulated in prison, where possession of writing materials was banned by authorities. He has been in a poor state of health, exacerbated by his treatment in prison, which has included torture, inadequate access to medical treatment, being held in a cell designed for military dogs, without bedding, and being deprived of food and water for long periods of time.
Background
Among the more than 1,350 political prisoners in Myanmar, there are many prisoners of conscience who have been penalized for peaceful exercise of the right to freedom of expression, including being penalized for photocopying leaflets without official permission and for possessing literature and political journals produced outside Myanmar. This includes U Win Htein, whom authorities sentenced for allegedly requesting a former student political prisoner to talk to foreign journalists about torture. Many are elderly or infirm, or have been given such lengthy prison sentences that they are not scheduled to be released until they are in their 70s or 80s. The authorities continue to arrest and hold political activists incommunicado, deny them access to lawyers and due process of law, and to harass former political prisoners and activists.
To sign a petition for the release of U Win Tin and other prisoners of conscience in Myanmar, please go to: http://www.rsf.org/article.php3?id_article=2059
For appeal cases on other prisoners in Myanmar, and further information on U Win Tin's imprisonment, please see: http://web.amnesty.org/library/eng-mmr/index
Does he have a brother named Rin Tin Tin?..........
Of course, it is not a Burmese name. Mispronounced?
You're not from around here, are ya?.............
A rare occasion that has me agreeing with AI.
Nah. It's a reference to the tin medal one receives for finishing 17th in an Olympic event. He finished 17th (and last) in cross-country skiing (Myanmar not being a hotbed of the sport), and the judges told him: "You win tin!" And it stuck as his nickname.
Glad I could help.
Say hello to Pedro......
Needless to say, they blasted me even further and defended the Iran regime.
Wonder why the Myanmar regime is considered fair game for the moonbats while citizens of autocratic Middle East regimes can rot in hell for all they care? Exposing my ignorance here, but that gives me strong inkling that there was a Burman Marxist/socialist movement suppressed by the autocrats there.
Burma went through a phase where it was ostensibly communist, but as usual was just another powergrab/robbery by the rulers.
The real reason is probably that Iran has some oil and great influence over the transport of oil, while the future of Burma means little to the US. In other words, vital to US interests + hates US + oppressive goverment = OK to AI. No US interests + hates US + oppressive government = worthy of spilling the blood of our children to help.
Our motives are only pure in the eyes of AI, you see, if we have NO vital interest.
Burmese names are strange to US ears, for example a well known professor during the 1988 unrest had the name Oo Tin Oo (sometimes spelled U Tin U).
Oo or U before a name is an honorific given to older or otherwise respected men, while Daw is the equivalent for a woman. (you often see Aung San Suu Kyi referenced as Daw Aung Suu Kyi. Sometimes she is referred to as "Ma Suu" - Ma being the honorific before a woman your own age or somewhat older. The implication is that she is not on a pedestal but rather down-to-earth and connected to the regular person.
My handle, "Ko Kyi" means big brother in Burmese. It is what my sister-in-laws call me. Sometimes I am known to friends as "Boun-Baht" which means "wrap-around-leg" - a humorous but reserved Burmese reference to the sterotype of non-Asian men being, well, you can guess.
Most Burmese have a nickname of some sort - my sister-in-law's nickname is "Chaw Su" which means "Ball of Pretty"
Nicknames are common here as well, but I am astounded at the Middle Eastern habit of having more than one name. You hear them on the news and they all seem to run together after awhile, Abu Abbas Hamid Mohammed Abdulla Abdul........
The Myanmar regime is run by military, that's why the moonbats are agin it...........If it were communist, they'd support it......or islamo-fascist......
If you have any Mexican friends, ask them their full name. Most men have about 10 names, including uncles, grandparents, ad nauseum.
I assume you refer to the icon of South of the Border, the tourist trap just south of the NC/SC line. Pedro is indeed within sight of southern North Carolina, but he's 100 miles east of me.
You, however, may wish to say hello to your Badger cousins.
I know some, but how in heck do they get all that on one birth certificate blank?
Those aren't RED Badgers..........
Sorry. They're all I had in stock.
There are factions. The Junta are also themselves Communists - of a mostly Stalinist strain. However, among the factions they oppress are some Trotskyites similar to Western far Leftists (but of course, they also keep the boot on the necks of all Rightists and pro Western moderates as well...).
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