Three months ago I tried to bring attention to the plight of Kyaw Zaw Lwin in a piece titled "Burma torturing an American citizen and we are silent?" The plea was largely ignored by people here. However, I want to thank the following people:
teacherken,
ask,
Melanchthon,
normal family,
jabney,
Dobber,
triv33,
marykk,
JML9999,
GANJA,
gzodik,
Johnny Nucleo,
OleHippieChick,
LaughingPlanet, and
ban nock
They did what they could to help me raise the profile of this American's life-threatening plight at the hands of the brutal Burmese dictators. I'm sorry we were not more effective.
I also think Beth Schwanke, a young attorney with the human rights group, Freedom Now deserves to be recognized for her tireless efforts in promoting Kyaw Zaw Lwin's case.
Finally, I think Barbara Mikulski deserves special notice for her help in making this a higher priority at the State Department that it would have been otherwise.
I suppose if I wrote better more people would have understood that Kyaw was imprisoned for taking a stand against the abuses of the Burmese government. This, by the way, is the same government that has kept Nobel Prize-winner and Prime Minister-elect, Aung San Suu Kyi, under house arrest for decades.
What disturbed me more than the indifference that greeted this man's plight was some of the outright hostility it generated in the responses. One commenter derided my efforts as as
an attempt to foment political concern among the netroots
I did not expect to encounter that in a community that prides itself on its liberal sensibilities -- especially given the fact that scores of elected representatives had put their names on a letter calling for Kyaw's release.
My primary concern at the time was Freedom Now was not getting the proper response from the State Department. Although this community largely turned its back on Kyaw, Ms. Schwanke and the good people at Freedom Now did not. She persisted -- along with many others -- like Senator Mikulski.
When Kyaw was sentenced to the infamous Insein Prison (where beatings, torture, and murder are commonplace) things looked bleak. Lots of people don't survive long there. Here's one example of how rough it is there. Prisoners get fed if their family brings them food. A five year sentence of hard labor when most of your family is already in prison is a veritable death sentence. Kyaw's sister and others were jailed in 2007 as a result of their participation in the Saffron Revolution. His sister was sentenced to 65 years in prison for defying the government.
Shortly after Kyaw was sentenced, things took a turn for the worse. He was removed from Insein Prison and sent to some other prison located deep in the jungle. That was the first time the Burmese had ever taken a foreigner out of Insein Prison. Lots of people expected that would be the last we would hear of Kyaw.
Fortunately, Ms. Schwanke is more competent at these things than I am. Members of Congress and State Department officials continued to pressure Burma to release Kyaw. Last week, they did.
Now that he has safely returned to his home in Maryland, Kyaw Zaw Lwin has not given up on his fight to promote democracy in his native country. He has not forgotten those he left behind. He plans to meet with the American politicians who pressed for his release and continue his activism pursuing a dream of promoting democracy in Burma.
I left my family and friends in prison.
My aims are not reached yet.
I want to be free altogether.
-- Kyaw Zaw Lwin (known to many as Nyi Nyi Aung)