Hanthawaddy U Win Tin

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He was a Burmese prominent journalist and politician. He was born on 12 March,1930. He is a founding member of NLD. He was imprisoned by Military Government because his activities and writings are regarded as a "THORN" from the Military point of view. Prisoner life started in 1989 and ended in 2008 (19 years).He was freed on 23 September 2008.
He attended Myoma High School in Yangon. He received a Bachelor of Arts degree in English literature, modern history and political science from Rangoon University in 1953. Some of his contemporary school mates were Kyaw Aung and Saya Mya Than Tint.
Win Tin served a 20-year sentence on charges including "anti-government propaganda." He had tried to inform the United Nations of ongoing human rights violations in Burmese prisons.
As a young man, Win Tin served as the editor-in-chief of The Mirror (Kyemon). In 1969, he was appointed as editor-in-chief of a State owned new daily newspaper, the Hanthawaddy Daily in Mandalay by Ne Win’s military government. It became a successful one within a few years. But thanks to his unwillingness to compromise his editorial independence and his proclivity to run stories criticizing the regime, the paper was shut down and he was dismissed in 1978.
Even after his release from prison,he wore the blue shirts every day because that shirts are reminder.
“I made a decision to keep wearing my prison shirt because my friends were still in prison, and I feel that the Burmese people, as a whole, are still in prison.”
He set up U Win Tin Foundation to help former political prisoners and their families including scholarships for university education in 2012. Most of the "Awarded" money was used for that purpose. Awards that he received -
UNESCO/Guillermo Cano World Press Freedom Prize
More at
(https://en.wikipedia.org/…/Guillermo_Cano_World_Press_Freed…)
World Association of Newspapers' Golden Pen of Freedom Award
(https://en.wikipedia.org/…/World_Association_of_Newspapers%…)
He died on Monday morning (21 April 2014) in Yagon of kidney failure. He was 85 years old.
(From left to right, the middle one is U Win Tin.)

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