Interviews with Zin Mar Aung

For getting to nonviolence movement, it might take time, but it also needs the mental courage and also it will give for the future if we will win, it will give, you know, a good example for our society and for our generation, because when people do not have the, you know, the physical power like the military or the regime, the only thing is, you know, we realize that we citizens have our own rights, you know, to get our government – to get the right to choose our government.

So, that is what we believe. And if we used the violence will, so, you know, we might be wrong. So the only – the nonviolence actions and movement might help. And, you know, also the nonviolence movement is only for the people who have strong mentality, so that is what I believe in – that I engage in.

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.