Letters from Burma by Aung San Suu Kyi.

Death in Custody (1)

On Aug. 2, U Hla Than, an NLD member of Parliament elected in 1990, died in the Rangoon General Hospital as a political prisoner of the SLORC (State Law and Order Restoration Council).

His constituency, the Coco Islands, is the smallest in the country but one of the best known. The chief of this small group of islands which lie in the Indian Ocean became notorious as a penal settlement for political prisoners after the first military coup of 1958. It was a place where every aspect pleased, vast stretches of ocean, sapphire skies, sandy beaches, graceful swaying palms, and only man seeking to crush and humiliate his fellow man was vile.

The penal settlement was dismantled in the late 1960s and there remained on the island a naval outpost, a skeleton administration and several families who were largely engaged in work connected with the coconut industry. The total population in 1990 was a little over 1,000.

U Hla Than and four other members of the NLD set out for Greater Coco Island on May 4, 1990, 23 days before the elections were scheduled to take place. There they established their headquarters in a small wood and bamboo bungalow and went to walk with the will to win support for their cause.

House to house canvassing was not permitted, there were strict regulations regarding the distribution of pamphlets and after U Hla Than had visited the home of a school teacher a couple of times, he was asked to sign an undertaking not to make any more visits to the house of any civil servant. He refused, explaining that he had merely been paying social calls, not engaging in any electioneering work.

Despite the restrictions, the intrepid five carried on with their mission to convey their message of democracy to the people of the islands long cut adrift from political developments on the mainland.

Although the monsoons had already begun, the morning of May 27 dawned sunny. Nearly 450 of the 613 people on the island above the age of 18 cast their votes in the two polling stations to choose between U Hla Than and the candidate of the National Union Party, the erstwhile Burma Socialist Program Party which had ruled the country for 26 years. Voting ended around 4 o'clock in the afternoon and the counting of votes was completed by 7:30 in the evening.

The NLD candidate won with 56.94 percent of the eligible votes. What took place on Coco Island might have been described as a mini-election but the achievement of U Hla Than and his team was a major one. When they got back to Rangoon they were given a well-deserved heroes' welcome by colleagues and supporters.

At the time he was elected as a member of Parliament, U Hla Than was 45 years old. He was born to a family of peasant farmers and completed his secondary school education in Moulmein. At the age of 20, he entered the navy. A young man of grit and industry who believed in the value of education, he continued with his studies during his years of service and passed the matriculation examination in 1975. He retired from the navy in 1977 and went on to study law. In 1980 he gained an LL.B. degree from the University of Rangoon.

U Hla Than took an active part in the democracy movement of 1988 as member of the Rangoon Lawyers Association. Later he joined the NLD and became the party committee chairman of one of the important townships of the Rangoon Division. When preparations for the elections began, he offered to stand as the party candidate in the Coco Islands, a constituency that aroused little enthusiasm. His offer was gratefully accepted.

The official announcements of the results of the elections were dragged out over weeks but it was widely known with in a matter of days that the NLD had won a spectacular victory. The country was in a jubilant mood, proud of the outcome of the first democratic elections in three decades, full of hope for the future, confident that at last there would be a government which would be transparent and accountable and which would gain trust and respect both at home and abroad.

Few in Burma suspected then that they were going to be the victims of one of the most blatant acts of deceit practiced on any people. Few realized then that the fair promises of a democratic transfer of power were worth less than the withered palm leaves drifting off the shores of the Coco Islands.

It was some two months after the elections when SLORC still showed no signs of relinquishing power, or of convening Parliament, that a climate of unease began to set in. And when U Kyi Maung and other key members of the NLD were taken into custody in September, the unease turned into dismay and disillusionment. The next month, a number of members of Parliament, including U Hla Than, were arrested. In April 1991 U Hla Than was tried by a martial law court, accused of complicity in attempts to set up a parallel government, and sentenced to 25 years imprisonment for high treason. Now, five years later, he is dead, the victim of a warped process of law and a barbaric penal system.