Interviews with Zin Mar Aung

The inspiration of persons, I have some role models, including The Lady [Aung San Suu Kyi is the leader of the main Burmese opposition party, the National League of Democracy (NLD). She led the NLD to victory in the 1990 elections, but the military government ignored the results and put her under house arrest. She was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1991. She is often referred to as “The Lady.”] and also the – when I read the biography and about the movements of Martin Luther King and Gandhi.

Because the nonviolence activities and civil rights movement. And even though Martin Luther King was born here [in the United States] but his speeches and his words are very universal; true not only for the United States but also for human beings who aspire to freedom. And, you know, the human rights and democracy is really very effective to reform his movement and his words, his speeches, to use in our democracy movement. Actually, India and Burma are closely working [together] in their independence movements and we heard about — there is a lot of books written in Burmese about India and including Gandhi.

And also The Lady [Aung San Suu Kyi] is really admiring Gandhi’s nonviolence, the movement, and we are trying to understand the linking idea of among– this leadership. During the 1990s, I heard about Nelson Mandela and South Africa through The Lady [Aung San Suu Kyi]. She introduced us through her speeches to what was happening across the world. And we know about that is really similar and is a good example for us, like South Africa and Nelson Mandela.

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.