An auspicious, bloodstained day

[struggle4progress]

By Ko Bo Kyi, published in International Herald Tribune
August 6, 2008
Mae Sot, Thailand

... On Aug. 8, 1988, millions of Burmese marched throughout the country calling for an end to military rule, which had isolated and impoverished us since 1962. It was the culmination of months of unrest in Burma, and the army met us with merciless violence. Soldiers shot hundreds of protesters that day, and the army killed an estimated 3,000 people in the following weeks. The streets ran with blood but, back then, there were few images and no Internet to spread the news rapidly beyond our borders.

The outside world largely ignored events inside Burma, but for me there was no escape. As a student in Rangoon, I participated in many demonstrations and witnessed the brutal suppression by the riot police that killed and wounded so many. The regime also closed all schools, ending my education.

The first time I was arrested, in 1989, together with another student leader, Min Ko Naing, I managed to escape on the way to the interrogation. But in March 1990, the police picked me up at a student demonstration in Rangoon - we still hoped then that the approaching elections would change things - and a court sentenced me to three years in prison with hard labor. I spent more than seven of the next nine years in prison. I endured beatings, torture and long periods of solitary confinement in conditions not fit for animals. In 1999, the ongoing surveillance and intimidation by military intelligence made me concerned that any day I might return to prison. I fled to the Thai border, where I began working to inform the world about the brutal treatment of Burma's political dissidents.

Twenty years after our rulers crushed the rebellion, their prisons and labor camps hold more than 2,000 political activists. The Nobel Peace Prize laureate Aung San Suu Kyi remains under house arrest, having spent much of the past two decades locked in her decaying house. Others, such as Burma's oldest political prisoner, the 78-year-old U Win Tin, remain incarcerated for their political writings and steadfast refusal to bow to the regime ...

http://hrw.org/english/docs/2008/08/06/burma19567_txt.htm