The sentencing of the Reuters reporters in Myanmar takes us back to the dark days of the military junta and the arrest of journalist Win Tin, mentor of Aung San Suu Kyi.
The two Reuters reporters sentenced to seven years in prison in Myanmar (formerly Burma) are thirty years old. The same number of years that Aung San Suu Kyi spent trying to steer her country towards genuine democracy, without succeeding. The age of the Burmese journalists Wa Lone (32) and Kyaw Soe Oo (28) mirrors the duration of Burma's struggle against military dictatorship, which began with the student uprisings of 1988 and the entry onto the political stage that same year of the Nobel Peace Prize laureate.
Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo themselves probably grew up dreaming of living in a country where free expression was possible, but were forced to think again after the harsh sentence that on 3 September charged them with "violation of state secrets". Their story is emblematic of how the era of struggle for fundamental rights has degenerated into a transition that is not only complex (as was foreseeable) but also violent. Aung San Suu Kyi herself had already judged them "guilty" before the court in Yangon (Myanmar's economic and cultural capital) had even delivered its verdict.
According to the account given by the journalists themselves, by Reuters and by other key witnesses, the two investigative journalists are said to have fallen into a trap. A police officer allegedly offered to meet them at a restaurant to hand over a package and have them arrested immediately afterwards by men from Yangon's Battalion 8. As they were being taken away, they were holding documents they had not had time to examine and which did not contain government secrets, as maintained by the government and the court. The evidence would appear to have been fabricated, and rather clumsily at that.
Why, then, were they arrested and convicted? The truth behind this unlawful detention lies in the spiral of persecution that since 2012 has targeted one million Rohingya Muslims and caused the exodus of 700,000 people in just a few months. Most of the refugees fled to neighbouring Bangladesh last year, from late August to November. Following an attack by some Rohingya guerrillas (Arsa) on military posts, the response of the Burmese army (Tatmadaw) and Buddhist militias from Rakhine State was so severe that it was condemned as "ethnic cleansing" by the United Nations. Some generals are also to be investigated for "genocide".
Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo were completing an investigative report on the very crimes committed against the Rohingya population. The Reuters news agency proved this by publishing the material they had gathered on the massacre of ten Muslim civilians carried out on 2 September 2017 by Burmese soldiers and Buddhist extremists from Rakhine in the village of Inn Dinn. The Burmese army itself admitted that these executions took place, sentencing seven soldiers to ten years in prison.
Read Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo's investigation into the massacre in Myanmar
It is paradoxical that two journalists who had arrived at the truth should be locked up in Insein prison. It is all the more paradoxical because Aung San Suu Kyi knows this place of detention on the outskirts of Yangon well. The current de facto leader spent fifteen years under house arrest, but for a brief period was also held at Insein — a fact that caused dismay and concern in the international community and among humanitarian organisations such as Amnesty International. Insein is synonymous with thousands of political prisoners, torture and abuse. Many of Suu Kyi's fellow activists and supporters were interned here. Among her closest friends, journalist Win Tin is remembered — co-founder alongside her of the National League for Democracy party (NLD). He remained there for 18 consecutive years, emerging as an old man at the age of 78.
"I am truly sad because the person we have admired so much all our lives did not understand us", said Wa Lone's wife, speaking of Aung San Suu Kyi. In August, Pan Ei Mon gave birth to a child the father has not yet been able to meet. "During the pregnancy I tried to be strong, hoping that Wa Lone would be released. But after the verdict, my hopes are shattered." Kyaw Soe Oo's partner, the mother of their three-year-old daughter, added in tears: "They are just journalists. They were doing their job." It is impossible not to search the faces of these two young mothers for some echo of the young Aung San Suu Kyi, who for the sake of her homeland and her political work left her husband and two sons behind in Great Britain.
It is equally true that Suu Kyi is very different from this younger generation. Born in 1945, she is the daughter of General Aung San, one of the founding fathers of the nation who negotiated independence from the United Kingdom, but was also the founder of the Burmese army. Her mother, Khin Kyi, served as ambassador to India. As a young woman, Suu Kyi studied at Oxford and worked at the United Nations. And like her father, who was assassinated shortly after independence, she retains a nationalist conception of a State with a Bamar (or Burmese) Buddhist majority, yet populated by more than 100 ethnic minorities. Her life has been marked by trauma, bereavement and at least two ambushes in which dozens of people lost their lives.
When in 2010 she was released from house arrest and began negotiations with the military junta — the so-called "transition to democracy" — many Western governments were filled with enthusiasm. "The Lady", as her people customarily call her, became State Counsellor, Minister of Foreign Affairs and Minister of the Office of the President. Power, however, remained largely in the hands of the former generals. An uncertain opening to the free market did nothing to stop land grabbing or other illegal exploitation of human beings and natural resources. For the Rohingya, meanwhile, time seems to have stood still since a year ago. No decent or safe solution has been found for a people who have almost entirely fled to Bangladesh and are living in precarious conditions, as the latest report by Médecins Sans Frontières makes clear.
Read also: Land grabbing in Myanmar. Here the phenomenon is also used as a form of persecution
The Burmese government and Suu Kyi herself continue to regard the exiles as undeserving of citizenship and rights. To them, they are "illegal Bengali migrants", despite having lived in southern Myanmar for centuries or decades. Moreover, a glimmer of press freedom had appeared to be emerging. Newspapers run by former dissidents opened their newsrooms on Burmese soil, but following the verdict against the Reuters journalists they fear a similar fate. Some observers say that the transition requires time and patience, but for others the persecution of the Rohingya or the Kachin Christians taints with betrayal every democratic effort made so far.
It was his mentor and closest ally Win Tin who was the first to shed light on the ambiguity of Aung San Suu Kyi's politics. Win Tin's bitter reflections are well summarised in an article in the British weekly The Economist. When she was elected to parliament in 2012, he said she had become too docile and pro-government. He, who in 1988 had persuaded Aung San's daughter to found the NLD (National League for Democracy), did not approve of what she had become. He believed that the way she allowed herself to be venerated by party members was actually harmful to democracy. Before he died, in 2014, he admitted to having considered another, younger leader to replace "The Lady".
In truth, Win Tin was by character and conviction the antithesis of Suu Kyi. Known as "Saya", the wise man, he was worlds apart from his fellow freedom fighter's elitist, aristocratic, even pop-icon approach. As the son of a merchant, Win Tin was naturally humble and not inclined to any compromise with the military. A visionary who throughout all his years of imprisonment fought to keep writing, as he recounts in his book Una vita da dissidente, published in Italy by O barra O edizioni. Every time he was deprived of paper and pen, he protested. It took him seven years to gather sufficient details about the abuses at Insein and smuggle them to a United Nations official. One wonders whether Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo, now in a cell in that same prison, think of this slight-framed, thick-spectacled journalist who once wrote: "As long as the black stripes on a yellow background are visible enough, a tiger remains a tiger".