The award, announced on Tuesday by the Board of the Paris-based WAN, was made in recognition of their outstanding contribution to the cause of press freedom.
In a statement, the Board said: “San San Nweh and U Win Tin were imprisoned for their support of Burma’s freedom movement. Both have suffered unspeakable hardships, and both are in poor health. Prison authorities have offered to release them if they renounce all political activity, and both have refused to do so. We honour their sacrifice and hope their dreams of Burmese democracy will soon be fulfilled. Their imprisonment is a deep blemish on the international standing of Burma which can only be erased by their release.”
Dissident writer San San Nweh, 56, was the first woman to train as a journalist in Burma. She was editor of two journals Gita Ppade-tha and Einmet-hpu and is a novelist and poet.
She was imprisoned for ten years in August 1994 for “anti-government reports” to French journalists and for “providing information about the human rights situation to the UN special rapporteur for Burma.”
She is reportedly sharing a tiny cell with three other political ‘convicts’ forced to squat because of lack of head room, and allowed to talk for only 15 minutes a day. She is suffering from liver disease, arthritis, partial paralysis and eye problems.
U Win Tin is the former editor of the daily Hanthawati newspaper, vice-chair of the Burmese Writers Association and a founder of the National League of Democracy, Burma’s main pro-democracy party whose landslide election victory in 1990 was not recognised by the military regime.
The leader of the party, Nobel Peace Prize laureate Aung San Suu Kyi, has called U Win Tin “a man of courage and integrity. He could not be intimidated into making false confessions. He is as clear as ever and his spirit is upright and unwavering.”
U Win Tin was arrested in 1989, tried in a closed military court and sentenced to 14 years in prison for allegedly being a member of the banned Communist Party of Burma. He has now served 10 years of that sentence.
According to information received by WAN, U Win Tin was crippled by prison guards who beat him severely and repeatedly when he was being held in the notorious Insein Prison. Accused of smuggling out letters detailing the conditions in the prison, he was transferred to a former guard-dog kennel and kept in solitary confinement for just under a year, until he was sentenced to an additional five years imprisonment for possessing writing materials.
In 1997 U Win Tin was transferred from Myingyan Jail to Rangoon General Hospital. According to reports, he is still in this hospital, and reported close to death, but his prison sentence will only expire in July 2008.
WAN, the global association of the newspaper industry, has awarded the Golden Pen annually since 1961. Past winners include Argentina’s Jacobo Timerman (1980), Russia’s Sergei Grigoryants (1989), China’s Gao Yu (1995), and Vietnam’s Doan Viet Hoat (1998). The 2000 winner was Nizar Nayouf of Syria.
U Win Tin
WAN defends and promotes press freedom world-wide. It represents 17,000 newspapers; its membership includes 66 national newspaper associations, individual newspaper executives in 93 countries, 17 news agencies and seven regional and world-wide press groups.