Ten Years On

About Leo Nichols

by Moe Aye

 

About Leo Nichols

James Leader Nichols was born in Burma in 1931. A long-time resident of Burma, he operated a shipping company from 1945 until 1962, the year when private firms were nationalized, and was the godfather and year when private firms were nationalized, and was the godfather and close friend of Nobel Peace Prize laureate Daw Aung San Suu Kyi.

Leo Nichols was appointed the Norwegian Honorary Consul to Burma in 1968, and in 1978 he was appointed consul for Denmark. In 1993, the State Law and Order Restoration council (SLORC) withdrew permission for him to serve as a consul, and he subsequently continued to act as de facto honorary consul for Norway, Denmark, Finland and Switzerland.

He was arrested on April 5, 1996 and charged with operating a fax machine and phone line without official permission. It is widely understood he was arrested for his close association with Daw Aung San Suu Kyi. On May 20,1996, he was sentenced to three years jail and fined US$5.000. A month later on June 22 he died in prison while waiting for an appeal.

The SLORC initially claimed Mr. Nichols died of a stroke in Rangoon General Hospital, while Foreign Minister Ohn Gyaw later said he died from eating food 'he should not have taken.' Leo Nichols was hastily buried in a cemetery in Rangoon the day after his death. No autopsy was conducted and due to the haste of the burial none of his family were able to be present at the funeral.

Leo Nichols is survived by his wife, Felicity Nichols, and five children.


 

 
 

About the Author

Moe Aye was born in Mandalay in 1964 and was a student at the Rangoon Institute of Technology throughout the 1988 pro-democracy uprising. During the uprising he joined the All Burma Federation of Student Union (ABFSU). He later joined the youth wing of the National League for Democracy (NLD), becoming in-charge of information in Botahtaung Township. On the morning of August 9, 1988, the army shot at him while he was demonstrating nears the Shwe Dagon Pagoda in Rangoon.

He was arrested by Military Intelligence on November 7, 1990. Moe Aye was charged under Section 5(j) of the 1050 Emergency Provision Act and was sentenced to seven years imprisonment with hard labour. At the time of his arrest, he was working for the ABFSU and was also carrying out duties for the NLD youth.

While in Insein Special Prison Moe Aye met Mr.James Leander Nichols and learned how the honorary consul to four Scandinavian countries was being questioned and beaten by November 22, 1996, and due to the harsh condition in prison he had to seek intensive medical treatment. Some six months later Moe Aye left for Thailand and is now living there. He is a regular correspondent for Democratic Voice of Burma (DVB), a radio station based in Oslo, and has articles regularly published in The Nation, a daily newspaper in Thailand.

 

 

 
 
 
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