Asia Buzz: Step By Step

Thursday, July 19, 2001

By the time I got to Rangoon, Aye Win was in prison. "There have been some arrests,'' he told me when I telephoned from Bangkok. "About 40.'' A few hours later, Aye Win was Prisoner No. 41. They came for him at 1 a.m. They always come for you at night in Burma.

It was May 1996, and agents of the military government were combing the country for members of the opposition National League for Democracy (NLD). Summoned to a conference by their leader, Nobel Peace prizewinner Aung San Suu Kyi, hundreds of NLD members, in their peach-colored jackets, were heading for Rangoon. Within days, hundreds of them were in jail.

I flew to Rangoon with dozens of other journalists to cover the conference. As the military brooks no opposition to its rule, we expected there would be arrests. But I didn't expect Aye Win would be among them. A 60-year-old accountant, he wasn't a member of the NLD. Bookish, bespectacled, soft-spoken and gentle, he was Aung San Suu Kyi's secretary. That's why it was Aye Win who answered the phone when I called Suu Kyi's home. He is also her cousin. Furthermore, he is the son of one of the seven members of Burma's first Cabinet gunned down by a political rival on July 19, 1947. The most revered of those seven martyrs is Suu Kyi's father, Aung San, the country's independence hero.

Aye Win began serving as Suu Kyi's secretary after her release from six years house arrest in 1995. He served because he asked her to. It was out of family obligation. For his loyalty, he served five years in Insein prison. He was never charged with a crime or received a trial. Two weeks ago, he was finally released.

Aye Win was one of 51 political prisoners set free by the military government. Among them were Par Par Lay and U. Lu Zaw, two comedians known as "The Mustache Brothers," jailed in 1996 for telling a joke about the government during a party at Suu Kyi's home. On July 18, the military released two more NLD members, San San Nwe, a woman journalist arrested in 1994 for giving an interview to a foreign reporter, and Aung Khin Sint, who was elected in 1990 to the parliament the military refused to allow to convene.

Burma's government should be praised for releasing these people. But none of them should ever have been arrested in the first place. The time they spent locked up under horrific conditions will always be a black mark against this government. And still languishing in jail are people such as Win Tin, a journalist and member of the NLD Central Executive Committee who has been incarcerated since 1989, spending stretches of his imprisonment in a tiny cell meant for guard dogs. And Win Htein, a former army officer who served as an aide to both Suu Kyi and her party's vice chairman, Tin Oo.

Some Burma watchers have hailed the recent releases as a sign that talks between Suu Kyi and the military are going well. Suu Kyi has been under virtual house arrest since Sept. 22 when she tried to travel outside Rangoon to meet party members. The talks, cloaked in secrecy, have been ongoing since October. As both sides refuse to divulge details about them, no one can say with any certainty whether or not they are bearing fruit or going nowhere.

For the sake of Burma and its people, one can only hope they are going well. But on Thursday, there was a sign they are not. July 19 is Martyr's Day, the anniversary of that black moment in Burma's history when Suu Kyi's father and his Cabinet were assassinated. For the past six years, the pro-democracy leader has appeared at every one of the government-sponsored public ceremonies honoring her father. On Thursday, however, she wasn't there. And although his father was also being honored, Aye Win was also nowhere to be seen.