Freed Myanmar dissident calls for more releases

Photo: AFP

PARIS (AFP) - Freed Myanmar dissident Win Tin said Wednesday two decades of torture and isolation in jail had not dented his determination to fight on for the political prisoners held by his country's military regime.

"It's not enough, this release of political prisoners, because there are some 2,000 prisoners," the 79-year-old journalist and activist said, in an interview with Radio France International one day after his release.

Until Tuesday, when the military junta released more than 9,000 prisoners from its jails in an amnesty ahead of elections promised for 2010, Win Tin had been the longest serving political prisoner in Myanmar.

Campaigners say few of those released were political prisoners, and Amnesty International shares Win Tin's estimate of 2,000 imprisoned dissidents.

Speaking with good humour and in fluent English, Win Tin described his harsh treatment and his plans to resume a political career cut short in 1989 when he was arrested for advising opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi.

Asked how he was feeling, he said: "Not too bad altogether, 19 years and three months. See, I'm now 79 and that's rather old for a Burmese. So I try to be healthy, I try to be normal.

"I tried to survive by keeping some political convictions. That is: the release of political prisoners, the convention of parliament and political dialogue between us and the government," he said.

"There were many tortures and mistreatments in the prison," he said.



"I was interrogated for five days at a stretch. Sleep deprivation, that was very hard. I was hooded and I was interrogated and somebody hit me. I was beaten many, many times.

"And of course from 1996 until now I was kept in solitary confinement, but it wasn't too bad," he added, explaining that he had no contact with other prisoners but could see his family for 15 minutes per fortnight.

Asked whether he thought Myanmar was ready for democratic reform, he said he would attempt to play a role, but warned: "I'm rather pessimistic because the army is so big in every structure of Burmese life."