2012 Democracy Award will be given to Burmese activists

Source: Press release from ned.org 

Photo: ned.org

 I was so thrilled to read the announcement from The National Endowment For Democracy (NED) regarding with their decision to provide "2012 Democracy Award" to five Burmese activists who have sacrificed to bring democracy and human rights in Burma. The event will be hosted by NED on September 20 at U.S. Capitol in Washington DC.

Each of these honorees has endured imprisonment and/or torture or exile because of their brave activities to bring  freedom and justice in Burma. Regardless of the life-threatening punishments and warnings from the military government, they continue to fight for the people. Thousands and thousands of activists died and scarified to change the dictatorship ruling system of the country.The battle has not yet come to an end. They are still fighting...

I believe this award will bring international attention towards Burma's democracy movements as well as to those who have fought/continue to fight for democracy in Burma. Thank you NED for giving this award to Burmese activists. 

2012 Democracy Award Honorees

Khun Tun Oo (photo-internet)

 Khun Tun Oo is a leading politician from Burma’s Shan State and Chairman of the Shan Nationalities League for Democracy (SNLD) party. Following the 8888 Uprising, he ran in the 1990 parliamentary elections as the head of the SNLD, which won 23 seats, the second most of any party after the National League for Democracy (NLD). After the military government annulled the results, Hkun Htun Oo continued to work for democratic change within the country, for which he was arrested in 2005 and given a 93-year prison term for treason, defamation, and inciting dissatisfaction toward the government. Amnesty International recognized him as a prisoner of conscience, and in December 2008, he was awarded honorary Italian citizenship by the mayor of Monza. In March 2011, the United Nationalities Alliance, a group representing several minorities in Burma, awarded him the Nationalities Hero prize for his “dedication and struggle for ethnic groups and national reconciliation.” He was released from prison in a presidential amnesty on January 13, 2012.

Min Ko Naing(photo-internet)

 Min Ko Naing is a founding member of the 88 Generation Students Group, which played a key role in the 2007 Saffron Revolution. He rose to international prominence for his leadership role in the pro-democracy protests in 1988 (popularly known as the “8888 Uprising”), during which time he was chairman of the All Burma Federation of Student Unions (ABFSU). The New York Times has described him as Burma’s “most influential opposition figure after Daw Aung San Suu Kyi.” Both the 8888 Uprising and 2007 Saffron Revolution were violently repressed by the military regime. As a key leader of both, Min Ko Naing spent the majority of the last 20 years in prison, much of it in solitary confinement. He was released on January 13, 2012, in a mass presidential amnesty. During the past two decades, Min Ko Naing has received numerous international awards for his courage, conviction, and dedication to nonviolence and democracy. These awards include the 2009 Gwangju Prize for Human Rights; the 2005 Civic Courage Prize, which he shared with Anna Politkovskaya and Munir Said Thailib; the 2000 Homo Homini Award from People in Need; and the 1999 John Humphrey Freedom Award, which he shared with Dr. Cynthia Maung.

Kyaw Thu (photo- internet)

Kyaw Thu is a two-time Myanmar Academy Award winning film director and actor, as well as founder and president of the Free Funeral Service Society (FFSS), which, since 2001, has provided free funeral services to more than 110,000 people across Burma. In addition, FFSS operates a free clinic for the poor, supports scholarships, organizes vocational and computer trainings, and helps to meet the health needs of former political prisoners. A leading man in Burmese cinema in the 1980s and 1990s, Kyaw Thu gradually turned his attention to social work, and by serving as volunteer president of FFSS, became one of the most prominent members of Burma’s civil society. In 2007, he and his wife were arrested after publicly supporting the Saffron Revolution, after which he was banned from the film industry. After his release, Kyaw Thu and FFSS played a vital role in rescue and fundraising efforts in the aftermath of Cyclone Nargis, which devastated Burma’s Irrawaddy delta and cost over 130,000 lives in May 2008.

Dr.Cynthia Maung (photo-internet)

Dr. Cynthia Maung is an ethnic Karen medical doctor and founder of the Mae Tao Clinic in Mae Sot, Thailand on the Thai-Burmese border. She founded the clinic soon after fleeing to Thailand in the aftermath of the 8888 Uprising, where she works with a staff of over 700 people to provide medical services to refugees, migrant workers and orphans. The clinic receives 400–500 patients daily, treating such conditions as malaria, respiratory disease and diarrhea, as well as gunshot wounds and land mine injuries. Dr. Cynthia and the Mae Tao Clinic have received numerous international awards, including the Taiwan Foundation for Democracy’s Asia Democracy and Human Rights Award, the Ramon Magsaysay Award, the John Humphrey Freedom Award, the Jonathan Mann Health and Human Rights Award, Catalonia’s International Prize, which she won in conjunction with Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, and most recently, the Freedom to Create Leadership for Women Award.

Aung Din (photo: internet)

Aung Din served over four years behind bars as a political prisoner in Burma after helping to organize the country’s nationwide pro-democracy uprising in 1988 as Vice-Chairperson of the All Burma Federation of Student Unions (ABFSU), the largest national student organization and outlawed by the regime. He also served as Vice-Chairman of Burma’s Youth Liberation Front (BYLF), and as Cabinet Secretary of the Parallel Government, which was founded by former Prime Minister U Nu during the peak of the 1988 pro-democracy uprising. Amnesty International recognized him as a prisoner of conscience in 1989, and its chapters worldwide campaigned for his release. In 2003, he co-founded the Washington, DC-based U.S. Campaign for Burma (USCB), an umbrella group of Burmese dissidents in exile and American activists, where he now serves as executive director.

Ref: http://www.ned.org/for-reporters/aung-san-suu-kyi-to-address-ned-2012-democracy-award-in-us-capitol

Letter from Burma : An Old Friend (written by Aung San Suu Kyi)

By Aung San Suu Kyi 

August 27, 2012(Mainichi Japan)

One of the greatest joys of my recent travels abroad was the opportunity to meet old friends again, particularly friends of my student days with whom I could pick up where we left off decades ago. The old friend about whom I am now about to write is not, however, one of them. In fact he is not a real person but a fictional character: Commissaire Maigret, whom I have already mentioned in a previous Letter from Burma, many years ago.

 

 When I visited France last June, President Holland presented me with a 27 volume set of the complete works of George Simenon. These were among the first books I packed to bring with me to Naypyidaw. The first hour of leisure I had after we (my dog Taichito and I) had settled into our new, temporary abode, I looked through the volumes to see how many Maigret stories there might be that I had not yet read. I was pleased to find there were several; not many, but enough to fill me with happy anticipation. The security personnel I came to know during my trips to Thailand and Europe were so very likeable I have developed a soft spot for the police and I thought that reading about my favorite policeman would be a most pleasant way to end each long working day. Moreover, as it would help me to improve my French, I could feel virtuous as well. Therefore I placed Volume 1 of the Simenon collection at my bedside with extreme satisfaction. (Of course, I felt a little guilty about skipping the non-Maigret parts of the collection but I could always go back to those later.)

Many of my colleagues in the National Assembly agree with me that attending the daily sessions feel a little like going back to school. It has been years and years since we had obediently filed into a room at the summons of a bell and taken up our places at assigned seats. The sessions usually begin at ten o'clock in the morning and there are two short breaks and an hour long lunch break during the course of the day. The delight with which we welcome these breaks brings back memories of distant schooldays when we could barely wait for the teacher to exit the classroom before we rushed out to play games and to enjoy the company of friends. And the eagerness with which members of parliament look forward to four o'clock, when the working day comes to an end, reminds me of a song that was very well known in the 1950s. Entitled simply "Four O'clock," it was sung in a popular film (a Burmese version of the Victorian melodrama East Lynn) by the heroine who awaits with longing her husband's return home at that hour.
Four o'clock may be welcome to me as the end of the working day at the National Assembly but it is also the beginning of the working evening, when I have to tend to all the business that could be roughly termed "extra-parliamentary." Meetings, papers, consultations, all these, with "Taichito time" tucked in here and there, take me up to about ten o'clock at night. By then only Commissaire Maigret can induce me to keep my eyes open. But not for too long; as my personal assistant Dr. Tin Mar Aung says often, the heaviest things in the world to hold up are eyelids that want to shut close.

In spite of the fact that I manage only a very short period of bedtime reading, seldom more than about 45 minutes, I am already on my second volume of Simenon because in the first there were only two Maigrets that I had not previously read. At present I am reading "Maigret et son mort" and I have discovered that the doughty "commissaire" sometimes takes to his bed when an investigation is not going well. He is then pampered by Madame Maigret and he plunges himself in a book by Alexandre Dumas pere. To learn that he possessed a complete collection of Dumas and that the mere smell of the old books was enough to make him recall all his little illnesses is like talking to an old friend about parts of his life that we had never touched on before. It also makes me wonder whether it might not be possible for me to make myself catch a heavy cold so I too could take to my bed and work my way through my Simenon collection. Somehow I do not think I would be able to swing it. This morning on the way to the National Assembly, my throat felt a bit sore and I speculated on the possibility of developing it into influenza but the prospect was not exciting enough to retain my attention for long.

As I follow, every night, my stolid, homely commissaire going about his work, it occurs to me that Cleopatra's infinite variety, which age can neither dim, nor custom stale, is really nothing to make a song and dance, let alone a play, about. After all, many of my friends possess that quality. Or perhaps it is friendship that possesses the qualities of perpetual freshness and auto-rejuvenation. It is because I am able to keep seeing them in a new light and because they help me to keep seeing myself in a new light throughout the long years of our relationship that my friends, however far away they may be, have remained a vital part of my life. Maigret has retained for me his fascination, a fascination that is unique because it emanates from what seems most ordinary and humdrum. He will remain an old and valued friend. (By Aung San Suu Kyi)

August 27, 2012(Mainichi Japan)