“How do you survive two decades in jail, most of it spent in solitary confinement, and still stay sane?
Somehow, former Burmese political prisoner Win Tin achieved just that. Now 83 years old, his body is frail and his heart is weak, but he seems to have lost none of the mental sharpness and wit that made him such a formidable foe of Burma’s military junta for decades. During a two-hour meeting last month, he spoke engagingly and with humor about his experiences in prison and his views about the direction in which the country was headed.
Win Tin made his living through words. He was one of Burma’s leading journalists, and an author and poet to boot. In 1988, after a series of pro-democracy protests were violently suppressed by the military regime, he helped Aung San Suu Kyi found a new political party, the National League for Democracy. The following year, he was locked away in prison. The military feared his ability to communicate so much that they largely kept him in solitary confinement, and even denied him pen, paper and reading matter. Often, the cells next door were kept vacant, he said, so he could not pass messages to his fellow prisoners.”
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