Interviews with Zin Mar Aung

Firstly, we like to follow the 1988 the democracy revolution. At that time, most all of our student leaders who were arrested in 1988 were still in the prisons. And we demand to release such, the student leaders. And also in 1988, you know, there was the 10th anniversary of ’88 revolution and also we demanded to implement the 1990 election results. [The 1990 elections to form a constitutional drafting committee were the most democratic since the Burmese military seized power in 1962. The opposition National League for Democracy won 392 of the 492 seats, but the military refused to recognize the results.]

And that’s why we continued the democracy movement and supported the NLD [National League of Democracy] party during this period, we asked to implement the 1990 election results within 60 days. If not, the consequences are the duty and the responsibility of the military regime; we supported the statements to implement the 1990 election. And during 1996 and 1988, we have no formal student organization, like underground organization. The connection between the student activists is really secret. And even we, working in the underground network, we didn’t know each other very well. Just only we know where to contact our side.

Even in our township, just a small group of the students meet in a tea shop and just held kinds of discussion that a lot of informers and military intelligence approach this group trying to, you know, get information on what they are doing and pressure not to do and threaten, you know. Because they are really afraid of the gen people [opposition] and the students who would like to engage in politics and who will oppose the military government during this period. And they’re trying to repress the people and threaten the people. And if someone, you know, did not obey and they sent easily those people to the jail. That is, they governed the people, you know to be in fear.

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.