Where Children Count the Years Before They Rejoin Their Mothers

By SAW YAN NAING

As they marked the 31st birthday this month of their mother, Thet Thet Aung, her three young boys asked their grandmother how many more years would pass before they see her again.

The children’s grandmother, Su Su Kyi, tried to comfort them by saying Thet Thet Aung would probably be released soon from prison. “I also told them to pray for her early release,” Su Su Kyi said in a telephone interview with The Irrawaddy.

Thet Thet Aung was sentenced to 65 years imprisonment in November for her involvement in the 88 Generation Students movement. Her husband Chit Ko Lay, also a member of the pro-democracy group, was sentenced to 11 years imprisonment in a separate trial in November.

In a gratuitous act of additional cruelty, the authorities sent Thet Thet Aung to serve her sentence in remote Myingyan Prison, 396 miles away from Rangoon. Chit Ko Lay will also probably be consigned to a remote prison—136 of the activists sentenced in November’s trials have so far been transferred to at least 22 jails scattered throughout the country, according to the Thailand-based Assistance Association for Political Prisoners (Burma), the AAPP.

The prominent activist Min Ko Naing, a founder of the 88 Generation Students group, was sent to Kengtung Prison in Shan State, about 700 miles away from his home in Rangoon.

By sending condemned activists to prisons far removed from their homes, the regime is practicing a kind of “kinship punishment” infamously employed by Germany’s Nazi regime to silence all opposition to its bestial policies. In Burma’s case, the regime is not only condemning human rights activists to outrageous terms of imprisonment but also punishing members of their families by making it extremely difficult for them to visit.

AAPP Secretary Tate Naing has strongly condemned the practice of confining activists in prisons scattered in remote parts of Burma, calling it “a systematic plan to make divisions between family, parent and children, wife and husband until they die.”

Su Su Kyi is faced with the prospect of travelling with three small children 78 miles to visit their mother and perhaps even further to whatever prison their father is assigned.

Her voice breaks as she relates how the two elder children, aged 7 and 9, try to calculate how old they will be when their mother rejoins them. The third boy is 2 ½—he was still being breastfed when his mother was arrested.

Su Su Kyi tries to keep the tears back. “I promised my daughter never to cry for her.
She told me always: ‘Mother, don’t shed any tears for me. I’m doing the right thing’.”

She confessed that she wept on her daughter’s birthday earlier this month. “I got up early that morning. It was very quiet and my grandsons were still sleeping. I missed my daughter beside me, talking. I felt very lonely and I started to cry.”

Her voice broke, while from the background came the sound of children playing.

Su Su Kyi knows from experience the ordeal now being suffered by her daughter. When her home was raided by authorities seeking Thet Thet Aung, she was arrested and detained in an interrogation center for nearly three weeks.

Both women are members of a politically committed family. Thet Thet Aung’s aunt, San San Tin, and her cousin, Noe Noe, both members of the 88 Generation Students group, were sentenced to at least six years imprisonment in the November trials.

“Our family is strongly committed to democracy,” said Su Su Kyi. “I also did what I could do to support their political dedication.”

Thet Thet Aung’s story is typical of the fate suffered by many women activists after the brutally-suppressed uprisings of 1988 and September 2007.

In November’s trials, at least 37 women activists were sentenced to lengthy terms of imprisonment. Some have young children—Nilar Thein, sentenced to 65 years, has a daughter about 18 months old, who is now being brought up by her grandmother.

Nilar Thein’s husband, Kyaw Min Yu (aka Jimmy), is also serving a 65-year sentence. Nilar Thein is confined in Thayet Prison, Magwe Division, while her husband was sent to Taunggyi Prison in Shan State.

Both are leading members of 88 Generation Students group and well used to prison life. Nilar Thein spent eight years in jail from 1996 to 2003 while her husband was jailed for 16 years after the 1988 pro-democracy uprising.

AAPP estimates that there are 184 women political prisoners in Burmese jails. They include Mie Mie and Noble Aye, members of the 88 Generation Students group, Su Su Nway, a prominent labor rights activist, and such members of Burma’s opposition National League for Democracy as Naw Ohn Hla and Win Mya Mya.

Su Su Nway, winner of the John Humphrey Freedom Award in 2006, is serving 12 ½ years in Kale Prison, in northern Burma’s Sagaing Division.

Thin Thin Aung, a veteran woman activist in exile, spoke of her pride in the sacrifices of Burma’s women political prisoners in a speech she gave in Washington DC earlier this month as she received a Madeleine K Albright grant on behalf of the exile group Women’s League of Burma.

“Despite these harsh consequences, I am proud to say that women activists still dare to speak out against injustice,” she said. “We aspire to a Burma that is democratic, free and prosperous.”