The New York Review of Books

In January, Min Ko Naing, one of Burma’s leading dissidents, walked out of prison. When the government ordered his release, he was over three years into a sixty-five-year jail term he had received for political activities in support of the “Saffron Revolution,” a nationwide uprising launched against the ruling military junta by Buddhist monks in 2007.

That was not the first time in his life that Min Ko Naing had run afoul of the authorities. He began his career as an activist during another protest movement in 1988 that was brutally suppressed by the reigning generals, who ordered troops to open fire on unarmed demonstrators, killing thousands. Thousands of the survivors disappeared into jails or labor camps, where they endured conditions of unstinting brutality, sometimes for decades. Min Ko Naing survived the crackdown, but as one of the best-known student activists he was squarely in the sights of the government and soon ended up under arrest. Altogether he has spent twenty-one of the past twenty-three years in prison, much of it in solitary confinement.