Word: prisoners
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...impoverished mine worker, Motlanthe came of age politically as a student activist during the Soweto uprising of 1976, and the following year was imprisoned for his role in those events. He spent ten years behind bars on Robben Island, the infamous South African prison which held so many anti-Apartheid leaders it became known as the "university of the struggle", where he joined fellow inmate Nelson Mandela in the ANC. Upon release, he became an organizer for the National Union of Mineworkers, becoming its Secretary General in 1987. A decade later, was voted into the same position...
...letters who instilled such fear in Burma's men of arms that he became their longest-serving political prisoner. But on Sept. 22, the day he was finally set free, U Win Tin was just as defiant as on the day of his arrest 19 years ago by Burma's military regime. "I will keep fighting for the emergence of democracy in this country," proclaimed the 79-year-old former journalist, still wearing his blue prison uniform as he spoke to reporters outside the home of a friend in Rangoon...
According to Myanmar Ahlin, a state-run newspaper, Burma's military government released Win Tin and 9,001 other prisoners this week so they could participate in national elections planned for 2010. The polls will be part of the regime's seven-point "Roadmap to Democracy." Burma, also known as Myanmar, has been ruled by a series of repressive military regimes since 1962. Classified by the United Nations as among the world?s least developed countries, the agrarian nation in southeast Asia is still recovered from May's Cyclone Nargis, which killed an estimated 80,000 people and devastated...
...from the law. Telephone conversations are, in any case, inadmissible as evidence under Burmese law, but the law offers scant protection for those who challenge military rule in Burma." She also noted that Win Tin was kept without sleep and interrogated non-stop for his first three days in prison. "A man of courage and integrity, Win Tin would not be intimidated into making false confessions," she wrote...
...last year's monk-led uprising showed, voices of dissent are becoming more difficult to silence. Although Win Tin has vowed to continue speaking out and working to end military rule, he is surely aware that the military is capable of revoking his newfound freedom. Another long-serving political prisoner, student leader Min Ko Naing, who was arrested the same year as Win Tin and released in 2004, was re-arrested last year in connection with protests over deteriorating economic conditions last year and is still languishing in prison...