Hkun Htun Oo
Hkun Htun Oo is the chairman of Burma's Shan Nationalities League for Democracy (SNLD). After receiving a 93-year jail term from the Burmese dictatorship in 2005 for "treason, defamation, and inciting dissatisfaction toward the government," Amnesty International recognized him as a prisoner of conscience.
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In 1990, Htun Oo ran for the Burmese parliament as head of the SNLD, which won 23 seats; only the National League for Democracy (NLD) won more. After the military government annulled the results, and through his arrest in 2005, he continued to work for democratic change. In March 2011, the United Nationalities Alliance, a group representing several nationalities in Burma, awarded him the Nationalities Hero prize for his "dedication and struggle for ethnic groups and national reconciliation." In January 2012, he was released from prison in a presidential amnesty.
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Burma May Have Elections—but Can It Become a Real Democracy?
A former prisoner of conscience, now the chairman of one of Burma's major opposition parties, on why minority rights are now such a central issue in the country.
