Interview with Kyaw Zwa Moe

Abstract

Interview with Kyaw Zwa Moe Penny Edwards (bio) and Kyaw Zwa Moe Sentenced to ten years in prison in 1991 for taking part in the democracy movement, Kyaw Zwa Moe was jailed first in Insein Prison, in Yangon, and then in Tharrawaddy jail. On his release in 1998, he fled to Chiang Mai, where he became a journalist with The Irrawaddy, a major news magazine founded by journalists living in exile in Thailand. Following the February 2021 coup, the offices of all independent media houses, including The Irrawaddy, were raided and sealed by the junta's troops. The magazine continues to publish independent news. Now in hiding, Kyaw Zwa Moe has been publishing stories under a pseudonym. This interview took place at The Irrawaddy offices in Yangon in July 2015 and at Ashi Tea House, in Berkeley, in April 2016, well before the most recent turmoil in the country. It was first published as "Truth to Power" in Mekong Review (vol. 1, no. 4, August–October 2016, pp. 9–11). p.e. penny edwards Your book They Must Apologize to the People, a compilation of interviews with dissidents, is now in its third print run. How do you explain its popularity with Burmese readers? kyaw zwa moe Most of the interviews were done between 2010 and 2012, when our country was in transition. Many people in Burma had no idea how difficult life could be as a dissident, a political activist, a political prisoner, or as a refugee outside Burma. I think that's one reason for its success—inspirational stories that bring out the experience and views of people with very different experiences of the past three or four decades. pe Some of the more intriguing titles are "Prisoner Monk" and "Fish-paste Democracy." kzm "Fish-paste Democracy" is about the wife of a political prisoner and her struggles to support her husband while he's in prison. At the same time, she's taking care of her entire family and also helping the families of other political prisoners. It's a sad story, but it's also a survival story. There are wives and mothers like her who are really courageous and brave, who kept supporting husbands, sons, and fathers jailed for their beliefs, whose families were harassed [End Page 197] by the authorities. The determination and courage of these women made that interview really inspiring to my readers. In Burma, Buddhist monks are respected as spiritual leaders, but monks who got involved in the democracy struggle were treated as criminals. I decided to interview a monk arrested for his political activism, because I wondered how many people in my country knew about the military junta's treatment of religious leaders. The monk I interviewed, U Zawana, had been in the same prison as me, and is very articulate. He described his life in prison and how terrible he felt. The monks were sometimes badly tortured. Outside prison, monks are looked up to as religious leaders, but in prison it was a totally different situation. pe The Irrawaddy was founded as a print journal in 1990, but in January of this year you stopped print production. Why? kzm It's not easy for traditional media to survive, especially in Burma. Print is very costly. Those media organizations that can keep publishing news can afford to lose money on their publications because they get enough revenue from other businesses they own. Another reason it's difficult is because Burma has become the most connected nation in the world, with over thirty million mobile phones for a population of about fifty million. That's why we decided to switch from traditional to digital journalism. But we are not new to digital media. We launched our Burmese and English websites in 2000. Millions of Burmese use Facebook for daily communications and as a source of news. Even the offices of the president and of Aung San Suu Kyi's state counselors have their own Facebook pages, as does the Commander in Chief of our military. That's why we believe that digital media is the right platform for The Irrawaddy to get information to our audience. pe There's a Thomas...