Civil society has reasons to be enthusiatic and the swaon song of 'official Marxism' is composed spontaneously.
SR
Burma's Democracy Roadmap Back on Track? by Larry Jagan 26 Sep 08 (http://asiasentinel.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1452&Itemid=168)
Military rulers release key political prisoners in preparation for 2010 elections
Burma's military leaders have laid the foundations for the next step in their democracy roadmap – elections in two years time. The regime usually signals the start of a new era with a mass release of prisoners, and this has now begun, with the freeing of more than 9,000, including several key political prisoners earlier this week.
Among those set free was the country's longest serving political prisoner, the 79-year-old veteran journalist and political activist, Win Tin. At least four other prominent MP's from the National League for Democracy (NLD) were also released. Two other members of the NLD were also given their freedom. However, the party's leader, Aung San Suu Kyi remains under house arrest in her Rangoon residence, where she has spent more than 13 of the last 19 years.
Win Tin spent the last 19 years in jail on subversion charges, and on his release vowed to continue fighting until Burma was a democratic nation – a battle he took up in 1988, when mass pro-democracy demonstrations brought the country to a standstill for months before the army intervened and seized power in a bloody coup.
"I will keep fighting until we achieve real democracy in this country," he told Burmese journalists gathered outside his house in Rangoon. "I will continue with politics as I am a politician."
The United Nations and international human rights groups have campaigned strongly for his release for years, citing his ill-health and age as reasons to set him free on humanitarian grounds. While in jail, Win Tin suffered two heart attacks and underwent a hernia operation. He also has high blood pressure, diabetes and spinal inflammation, according to the Paris-based Reporters Sans Frontieres, which has been continuously campaigning for his release. Despite his ordeal in prison, he is in good spirits and good health, according to his family.
Win Tin served as a close aide to Aung San Suu Kyi and helped found the NLD with her in 1988. He was arrested on 4 July 1989, along with other opposition politicians. The authorities initially kept him without food, while interrogating him about his role in the democracy movement, the opposition leader wrote in a newspaper article in 1996, after she was released from house arrest for the first time.
He was initially sentenced to 14 years in prison in a military court for allegedly being a member of the banned Communist Party of Burma. In 1996 he was sentenced to an additional seven years for writing to the UN about prison conditions and for penning and circulating anti-government pamphlets while in prison.
A long-time editor, journalist and poet, Win Tin refused to allow prison to silence him. "He would write poems on the walls of his cell with ink made of brick powder and water," Zin Linn, a former political prisoner and close colleague, told Asia Sentinel. Now a free man, he remains defiant – insisting on wearing his prison blues as a sign of protest against the military rulers. "I will be happy only when all political prisoners, including Aung San Suu Kyi are released," he said.
Win Tin's release came as a surprise. Many analysts believe the regime's freeing of a few prominent political activists was timed to help deflect criticism and pressure from the international community at this year's UN General Assembly, which started in New York last week. Last Friday the UN envoy for Burma, Ibrahim Gambari appealed to the military junta to release the country's political prisoners. "It is our sincere hope that the government of Myanmar will listen to the voices of the international community. As long as political prisoners including Suu Kyi are not released, it will continue to be a problem for the regime and it will draw back progress towards democratisation."
It would seem that the regime may now be trying to make concessions to the international community for fear that the UN Security Council might resume its efforts to have international sanctions imposed against Rangoon. "The releases were planned to help reduce international pressure," Bo Kyi, who runs an organisation for Burmese political prisoners based in Thailand told Asia Sentinel. "It is meant primarily to serve as a weapon for its allies - China, India, Russia and ASEAN – in order to defend it at the UN."
The international community has welcomed the releases – especially that of Win Tin. But most analysts and diplomats in Rangoon do not believe this is the start of a mass amnesty for the country's remaining political prisoners.
"While the release of U Win Tin and his fellow prisoners is certainly the best news to come out of Myanmar for a long time, unfortunately they represent less than one per cent of the political prisoners there," Benjamin Zawacki, Amnesty International's Myanmar researcher told the Bangkok Post from London. "These handful of people should never have been imprisoned in the first place, and there are many, many more."
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