By Veronica Pedrosa
From midnight (BST) tonight for a week, I shall be fasting to protest against the continued unjust incarceration of former monk and Saffron Revolution leader U Gambira and other less well-known political prisoners.
As Daw Suu herself asked many years ago, I want to use my freedom to help others gain theirs. I would like you to understand that my conscience simply cannot tolerate inaction in the face of this situation. Are some political prisoners more equal than others, as George Orwell might put it? Today’s decision to sentence Gambira to 6 months hard labour on an immigration offence is nothing less than a travesty. As the UN Special Rapporteur noted in a tweet earlier today: “#Please remember #Myanmar (2) #UHDR Art.13 (2) Everyone has the right to leave any country, including his own, and to return to his country.”
Myanmar/Burma is to deserve the “newly-democratic” description being copied and pasted all over the internet and radio and television scripts, this kind of arbitrary detention must end and its perpetrators made accountable. What kind of democracy denies its citizens justice?
I think the sentence today is the result of a deal or at the very least an understanding between the NLD and the military.
The military have a particular and intense animosity towards Gambira as the most outspoken, stubborn, wily and reckless organizer of the Saffron Revolution in 2007. And yes, he’s a little crazy from the years of torture, but maybe also because that’s what it takes to stand up to mindless greed and tyranny and imagine it’s possible to do so without violence and through metta. This is the reason he was singled out for regular intense torture during his previous incarcerations. Long periods of solitary confinement, weeks manacled hand and foot, long periods in stress positions, regular beatings with a black bag over his head, two bouts of malaria, two hunger strikes (yes even in jail he spoke out for better conditions for him and his fellow prisoners), and worst of all to my mind, a form of chemical torture that I had never come across in all the years of reading about the practice of torture (started when I was a teenager with the regular updates from Task Force Detainees organized by Sister Mariani – some of my Philippine friends will know what I’m talking about). He has suffered enough and it was never for himself, it has always been for his dream of a better Burma.
This new sentence, I contend, reveals something of the cynical political horse-trading the NLD and military. Not a single one of those torturers, murderers, war criminals will be brought to account. Instead they are in power, at the very least apologists if not perpetrators. But Gambira is jailed, deprived of his freedom because the authorities have no interest in human dignity, rights. Only power and money.
Make no mistake, if they can do this to even one citizen, it’s difficult not to conclude that they can do it and will do it to whomever they wish.
Justice has lost its meaning, and become a mere throwaway word to appease the naive and credulous, even with an elected government made up of many former political prisoners themselves.
Gambira’s conviction and imprisonment today is living proof of that.
Once again I am posting here the letter Gambira sent from hiding during the Saffron Revolution, in effect a call for equal civil rights and opportunities for all irrespective of creed, race or class.
This movement came as a shock to the military junta and arguably led to the reforms that have put the NLD and Daw Aung San Suu Kyi in government.
Gambira and his family are staunch supporters of Daw Suu and her party and have been disappointed by the criticisms aimed at them. Today in a Mandalay courtroom the disappointment has deepened.
If you wish to join my protest by skipping a meal please let me and the BCUK know on twitter or Facebook using the hashtags #FastForFreedom #FreeGambira. You can also write to the Burmese Attorney General Tun Tun Oo, urging him to ensure the immediate release of U Gambira and the remaining political prisoners, as well as to U Gambira himself to express your solidarity:
U Gambira (aka) Nyi Nyi Lwin
C/O The governor of Obo Prison
Obo Prison
Mandalay
Myanmar
Veronica Pedrosa is a freelance journalist and correspondent at Al Jazeera English.