A surgeon, writer and political commentator, Ma Thida spent five and a half years in prison in the 1990s for her activism. Ever since her release she has monitored and written on events in her country, and, after the lifting of the military regime, founded PEN International's Myanmar Centre.
“Until and unless there is a free and fair media, we cannot have free and fair elections and a free and fair government too.” Ma Thida, 2015
Ma Thida’s life has mirrored that of the democracy movement in Myanmar (formerly Burma) from its birth in the mid-1980s, through its brutal suppression throughout the 1990s and 2000s, to its ascent to government in 2015, and its revival after the junta took power again in 2021.
A surgeon, writer and political commentator, Thida spent more than five years in prison in the 1990s for her activism. Ever since her release she has monitored and written on events in Myanmar, and, with the lifting of the military regime, she became a founding member of PEN International’s Myanmar Centre, and a member of PEN International’s Board. She was elected chair of PEN International’s Writers in Prison Committee on 14 September 2021.
Thida was a bookish, academic child. She was only 16 when she started medical school, and despite the demanding schedule, found time to write short stories alongside her studies. She made such an impression that she was soon being published in the weekly Yokeshin journal. Her stories centred on tales of poverty, something that she had observed when visiting her grandparents’ home in the countryside, and that was a driving force in her becoming engaged in politics in the mid 1980s. Thida later became an aide to Aung San Suu Kyi, leader of the newly founded National League for Democracy (NLD). She travelled the country on the campaign trail until Suu Kyi was put under house arrest in 1989, where she was to stay until 2010.
Despite the systematic repression of democracy activists, Thida continued to campaign until, in August 1993, she was arrested. She was sentenced to 20 years, convicted of ‘endangering public tranquility, having contact with unlawful associations and distributing unlawful literature’. Conditions at Insein Prison were dire. Often held in isolation and denied proper medication, Thida’s health declined, and she contracted pulmonary tuberculosis among other ailments. Following an international campaign headed by PEN International and Amnesty International, she was released early, in February 1999.
Thida returned to medicine, studying in the evenings on-line for a Phd in health management while volunteering in the mornings for the Muslim Free Hospital, which provides free medical care for people of all denominations. In the afternoons she edited a literary magazine. She earned her living working at a private medical practice. In 2008, when a travel ban against her was lifted, she went to the USA to take up university fellowships – first at Brown, and then at Harvard.
Thida returned to Myanmar where she resumed her work writing and editing literary magazines. As restrictions eased, she was able to publish more freely. Her novel Sunflower, banned when she was arrested, became available. In 2011 her novel, ‘The Roadmap’, written in English and based on the democracy movement, had to be published under a pseudonym in Thailand. Yet just a year later her prison memoirs were published in Myanmar.
In 2016, Thida became the first recipient of the “Disturbing the Peace” award by the Vaclav Havel Library Foundation in New York, which noted the unjust persecution she suffered because of her beliefs.
In the November 2015 General Elections, the NLD won an absolute majority of parliamentary seats in the first open elections since 1990. While the NLD is criticised for not speaking up for minority rights, Thida was editor of The Independent, which focuses on ethnic issues. In a June 2013 Committee to Protect Journalists statement, Thida said: “Unless we have that type of paper, we cannot say we have freedom. Otherwise we cannot hear the voices from far, remote areas: What are they suffering? What are their needs? What is happening? We haven’t a clue.”
Back in 2015, Thida – while an admirer of Aung San Suu Kyi – was not uncritical. She noted that people “have too high expectations of her … it’s not fair for anyone to shoulder such a burden. This is how I see her being trapped in a prison of praise.” Thida, free from this burden, continues to speak out for all. In 2013, she founded PEN International’s Myanmar Centre, working on strengthening freedom of expression and the legal frameworks needed to ensure it. The Centre found itself under attack by increasingly influential Buddhist hard liners. One PEN event had to be cancelled when ‘several truckloads of Buddhist monks’ arrived, demanding that two Muslim speakers be removed from a panel, and that Thida not be part either because of her work for the Muslim Free Hospital.
As Thida noted, new freedoms have brought with them new challenges. “We think of the media ownership as a form of censorship. Even before the end of state censorship, media licenses always played an important role in prohibiting freedom of expression. It’s much easier for military cronies or family members to get licenses to start a newspaper or magazine or TV station. Reporters and editors face direct threats from the media owner. The writers can be dismissed or fined within their organization if they don’t write what the owner wants.”
In a short time, PEN Myanmar had an impact. In June 2017 it was announced that journalists would no longer be imprisoned for ‘defamation’, and that other areas of press freedom would be strengthened. The same month, PEN Myanmar published what it planned to be a series of six monthly ‘score cards’ monitoring freedom of expression based on scores from other NGOs, and giving recommendations for changes that need to be made to address the continuing problems of censorship.
But the country’s democratic transition was suddenly reversed, when the military staged a coup in February 2021 and immediately unleashed a crackdown that targeted the opposition, anti-junta artists, and activists. Thida was able to leave the country, and joined the South East Asia Studies at the McMillan Center of Yale University, as a research associate. In 2022, she moved to Germany as a fellow of the Martin Roth Initiative, and subsequently a fellow at the Writers-in-Exile program of PEN Germany.
In 2016, Thida highlighted the need for the military to take accountability for what happened to the country during the junta era: “What I really want is a public apology, not only for myself but for my people. There should be a mechanism to acknowledge and admit what was wrong and who is responsible, without any bitterness or hatred.”
Her dedication to fight for Myanmar’s democracy is unwavering as she continues to write poems, participate in podcast interviews, and participate in conferences to condemn the military regime and promote the citizen resistance and pro-democracy movement in her country. In May 2024, her book A-Maze was published, in which she tackles the post-coup situation and the prospect of the Spring Revolution.
Reflecting on her experience and the hardships faced by Myanmar writers under junta rule, she wrote about the essence of freedom and creativity.
“Freedom finds its fullest expression through creativity. This is why I say: creativity rests not just in the freedom we have, but also in hunting for the freedom we want.”
Illustration by Florian Nicolle
