Never give up, be strong
Stáhnout obrázek
Linn Thant was born on March 14, 1969 in Meiktila, Central Burma. He grew up in a country destroyed by civil war under the military rule. His British grandfather taught him about Christian culture and his father taught him politics. Already at the age of sixteen, he studied civil engineering at a university and at the same time taught students of the same age. During the national protests in 1988, he became one of the leaders of the student organization. He was hiding after the military coup took place, but he was arrested, imprisoned and tortured at a military intelligence base a year later. In a closed trial on May 25, 1990, three military officers sentenced him to death. In the Insein prison he waited three years for the execution until his sentence was changed to twenty years in prison. He was imprisoned in a small cell without daylight, chained in complete isolation until 1997, when he was transferred to another prison. He was released on July 9, 2008. He went to Thailand, where he worked as a journalist in exile media. In 2011, he participated in the Forum 2000 conference at the invitation of Václav Havel. He received asylum from the Czech Republic and continued to live in Thailand before a coup d‘état took place there in 2014. He moved to Prague, where he currently lives, makes a living as a teacher and publishes in Deník Referendum. He sees education as a path to political change in Burma, so during his studies, in prison and after his release, he devoted himself to teaching and tried to pass on his life experiences.
