Kyaw Zaw Lwin aka Nyi Nyi Aung is a 40-year-old
naturalized U.S. citizen who has worked for the
Burmese pro-democracy cause for more than half his
life. Born on October 28, 1969, in Rangoon, Burma,
he currently resides in Montgomery Village, Maryland. 

In the lead-up to the 1988 protests in Burma, Nyi Nyi Aung was a student and an active member of the All Burma Students Democratic Movement Organization (Makada). He played a key role in organizing high school student groups. Nyi Nyi was arrested by the military junta in March 1988, and was briefly detained and badly tortured in Insein prison. After his release, he continued his involvement in the democracy movement and was one of the leading organizers of the country-wide demonstrations against the junta that culminated in the military’s violent crackdown on August 8, 1988.
A short while later, Nyi Nyi Aung fled to Thailand. He later went on to co-found the Burmese Students Social Affairs Committee, which was funded by the Jesuit Refugee Service to provide humanitarian and medical assistance to Burmese students and illegal immigrants in Thailand. He was also elected general-secretary of the Overseas National Students Organization of Burma (ONSOB), an exile group working for human rights and democracy in Burma.

In October 1993, Nyi Nyi Aung resettled in the United States as a political refugee. He was ultimately naturalized on May 16, 2002. Upon arriving in the United States, Nyi Nyi Aung received his Bachelor of Science degree in computer science from Purdue University. He identifies himself as an independent activist and is not affiliated with any one particular organization.

In this context and as a U.S. citizen, he has made five trips to Burma in recent years (including the most recent trip on September 3), each time entering the country on his official U.S. passport with a valid entry visa granted by a Burmese embassy. He has worked quietly with a number of non-violent groups inside the country to help them organize their opposition to the junta.

Most recently, as part of the Free Burma’s Political Prisoners Now! Campaign, Nyi Nyi Aung traveled to New York in June 2009 with a delegation of family members of political prisoners. His mother, Daw San San Tin (five-year
prison term), and two cousins, Thet Thet Aung (65-year prison term) and Chit Ko Lin (seven-year prison term), are imprisoned for their involvement in the 2007 Saffron Revolution. They were arrested together in a raid
on his mother’s home on October 19, 2007. Another cousin, Noe Noe aka Nwe Hnin Yi, is serving a seven-year prison sentence. As part of the delegation, Nyi Nyi Aung helped deliver a petition with some 680,000 signatures calling for the release of all political prisoners in Burma to U.N. Special Advisor Ibrahim Gambari.

Initially detained on September 3, 2009, his family did not receive an acknowledgement from the junta it had detained him until September 20 when he was granted consular access. U.S. Embassy officials learned he had been tortured. These acts of torture included the following the denial of food and sleep for 7-8 days; being kicked in the face and beaten; and having requested and having been denied medical treatment.

On September 23, the state-run New Light of Myanmar published an article announcing that the junta had arrested Nyi Nyi Aung on September 3 when he arrived at the Rangoon airport. The article claimed that he “came to
create unrests within the country” and had “plotted internal riots and sabotage” in coordination with two internal pro-democracy organizations.  On October 3, all the original charges under the State Protection Law and Emergency Provisions Act were inexplicably dropped, and in an abrupt change of course, the junta announced that Nyi Nyi Aung would now be charged with violations of Burma Penal Code Articles 420 (Fraud) and 468 (Forgery) related to his alleged possessionand use of a Burmese national identification card. There was no explanation as to why the national security charges were dropped nor as to why the original charges (and the lengthy article in the New Light of Myanmar) made no mention of a fraudulent identity card. Each of the new charges comes with a maximum potential sentence of seven years, meaning that, if convicted, Nyi Nyi Aung faces 14 years in Burmese prison.  His trial in Burma is ongoing.

Freedom Now was retained by a member of his family to represent him in November 2009.

On December 11, 2009, Freedom Now issued a Press Release demanding the Burmese junta provide consular access to the detained American, one week after he began a hunger strike. See also Wa Wa Kyaw, Junta Exacts Revenge on American Citizen, The Nation (Bangkok), December 10, 2009.

On December 17, 2009, 53 Members of Congress wrote to junta leader Than Shwe to press for the release of Nyi Nyi Aung.   See Press Release and Letter; article in The Irrawaddy; Human Rights Watch calls for U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to press for his release. 

On February 10, 2010, Burma's military junta convicted and sentenced Nyi Nyi Aung to three years imprisonment at hard labor. See Press Release. On February 16, 2010, Freedom Now filed a Petition to the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention.  See also Press Release.

Wa Wa Kyaw, Nyi Nyi's fiance published An American in Burma's Gulag, Wall Street Journal Asia, February 22, 2010.

On March 18, 2010, Nyi Nyi Aung was released from prison. See Press Release; For Democracy Activist Nyi Nyi Aung, Homecoming is Bittersweet, Washington Post, March 25, 2010.

Nyi Nyi Aung reunited with his fiance

at Washington Dulles Airport

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