Interviews with Zin Mar Aung

I was arrested in my home. One day before I was arrested one of my close colleagues was arrested first. And his family informed me, you know, run away from your home. And that night I didn’t come back to my home and I stayed away from my home because usually the military intelligence arrested the people at nighttime. So at nighttime I did not go back to my home and I stayed away from my home. But in daytime I came back, unfortunately let’s say.

I came back to my home to meet my father and get some money to run away, such – in some period of the arrested one of my colleagues arrested. So when I came back to my home they follow me and arrested in daytime in my home. The officer told me that they have a question to ask about my friend and just come along with us for some questions. And then they rushed me to the interrogation camps for three days. And after that, they sent me to the prison for six months. Six months after, they sentenced me within the prison for 28 years just – only for delivering two statements.

One statement is the – supporting the NLD Party [National League for Democracy, the leading opposition party.] to implement the 1990 election [results]. And the second thing is the poem and the statement delivered by the student union that motivate the people and they challenge the military government. In the poem we motivate and ask the people to get out of their homes and come to the streets to protest the government.

The poem, they motivate the people to do like this. So they’re really afraid of this poem. Yeah, actually the trial is totally managed by the military intelligence, just setting, as they call it, within the prison. I didn’t get any legal assistance.

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.