{"id":1597,"date":"2014-04-22T18:02:21","date_gmt":"2014-04-22T18:02:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/freedimensional.org\/?p=1597"},"modified":"2014-04-22T18:02:21","modified_gmt":"2014-04-22T18:02:21","slug":"u-win-tin-writer-jailed-by-myanmar-junta-dies","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/fd.artistsafety.net\/2014\/04\/u-win-tin-writer-jailed-by-myanmar-junta-dies\/","title":{"rendered":"U Win Tin, Writer Jailed by Myanmar Junta, Dies"},"content":{"rendered":"
The political party he helped found, the National League for Democracy, announced the death. Reports in the local news media said his kidneys and other organs had failed.<\/p>\n Mr. Win Tin joined eight other political activists to form the National League for Democracy in 1988. Led by Daw Aung San Suu Kyi<\/a>, who won the Nobel Peace Prize<\/a> in 1991 for her human rights advocacy, the party won a landslide victory in national elections in 1990, but the governing generals refused to cede power.<\/p>\n Even before the elections, the military government placed Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi under house arrest, where she remained for 15 of the next 21 years. It was widely assumed that the government had been reluctant to jail her because her father had been a hero of the nation\u2019s independence struggle against the British and a founder of the modern Burmese army.<\/p>\n But the government had no compunction about incarcerating Mr. Win Tin, whom Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi and other party leaders called Saya, or \u201cthe wise one.\u201d It accused him of being a Communist, a charge he denied.<\/p>\n As described in a memoir, \u201cWhat\u2019s That? A Human Hell\u201d (2010), his imprisonment, beginning in 1989, was harrowing. He was placed in a tiny cell in what had been a dog kennel and given no bedding. He was fed sparingly and given inadequate medical care. An operation for a strangulated hernia, performed in a dirty prison hospital cell, resulted in the loss of a testicle. He lost most of his teeth in a beating and was then denied dentures. He had two heart attacks in prison. Much of the time he was in solitary confinement. He was deprived of sleep. He was denied visits from the Red Cross. New charges were often added to his sentence.<\/p>\nU Win Tin, a journalist, author and poet who became a leading opponent of the military rulers of Myanmar<\/a>, where he was imprisoned and tortured for 19 years, died on Monday in Yangon, formerly Rangoon. Sources differ on whether he was 84 or 85.<\/p>\n