YANGON, April 21 (Reuters) - Win Tin, a veteran Myanmar
journalist and ally of Aung San Suu Kyi, who spent 19 years in
prison because of his fight against military rule, died on
Monday at the age of 84, colleagues said.
He was a founding member of Suu Kyi's National League for
Democracy (NLD) in 1988 and one of the party's leaders, but said
he preferred being a journalist.
"I honestly think I was cut out just to be a journalist
rather than a politician," he told Reuters in 2010.
But he was an activist journalist and could not sit idly by
as his people suffered under decades of dictatorship.
He took part in nationwide protests in 1988, which were
brutally crushed by the military, and helped set up the NLD
later that year.
"We've lost the most selfless and fearless politician," his
close friend Tha Ban, another veteran journalist and politician,
told Reuters.
"It's an irreplaceable loss for not only for the NLD but
also for the entire people."
Win Tin did not always see eye to eye with Suu Kyi, who was
released from house arrest in 2010 after a rigged election
ushered in a reformist government and ended almost 50 years of
military rule.
He publicly disagreed over her decision to run in April 2012
by-elections that took the NLD into parliament, arguing that the
party's participation lent authority to a government packed with
former generals.
"So far as I know, he was the only leader of the NLD party
who had the courage to disagree with Daw Suu openly in some
issues," said a senior NLD member who asked not to be named,
using an honorific to refer to Suu Kyi.
"But he never betrayed her. He was a staunch supporter of
amending the constitution so that it will pave the way for her
to become president."
Arrested on July 4, 1989, Win Tin was sentenced to three
years in jail with hard labour for his political activities. The
regime repeatedly extended his term, which included punishing
spells of solitary confinement, as he pursued his political
activities from behind bars.
Campaigns by Amnesty International, PEN International and
other human rights and freedom of expression advocates turned
Win Tin into a globally known opponent of an oppressive regime.
He was Myanmar's longest-serving political prisoner when he
was released in an amnesty on Sept. 23, 2008.
"My future plan is to keep fighting till the military
dictatorship ends," he told Reuters at the time, still wearing
his prison uniform as a symbolic protest against what he saw as
his illegal detention.
Win Tin, who never married, was admitted to hospital in
early March with internal bleeding and died of apparent kidney
failure. The NLD is arranging his funeral for April 23.
(Editing by Alan Raybould)
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