Imprisoned Myanmar Activist Dies

[soewin@xxxxxxx]

>From The Japan Times: (Asia-Pacific) 10 June 1996

IMPRISONED MYANMAR ACTIVIST DIES

BANGKOK (AP) A democracy advocate jailed by Myanmar's military government
since 1991 has died of heart failure, the government said Monday. 

Tin Shwe, 67, an organizer for Aung San Suu Kyi's National League for
Democracy, or NLD, died Sunday at Yangon General Hospital, said a government
statement received in Bangkok. 

He was known to suffer from heart disease and his family had visited him
just two days before his death, the statement said. Tin Shwe, a lawyer, came
from Monywa in Mandalay Division, 615 km northwest of Yangon.

An NLD member in Bangkok said Tin Shwe was arrested Aug. 8, 1991, as he gave
food to Buddhist monks in a ceremony to remember those who died in a failed
democracy uprising three years ago on that day. Myanmar's military
government suppressed the uprising by gunning down more than 3,000 unarmed
civilians. 

Tin Shwe spent quite some time in jail before being tried, and no NLD source
in Bangkok or Yangon knew the length of his sentence. The government said
Tin Shwe was arrested for "his involvement in the instigation of civil
unrest and for the attempt to form the parallel government." 

The military carried out massive arrests of the democratic opposition that
year, following a 1990 election in which Suu Kyi's party won 82 percent of
the seats in a Parliament the military refused to convene.

Conditions in Myanmar's prisons, particularly for political prisoners, have
been described as cruel by several human rights groups. 

Myanmarese prison conditions drew international condemnation in 1996 when
Leo Nichols, an honorary consul for several Scandinavian countries, died of
a stroke in prison after only three months.

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