COVER STORY
“WE WANT THE PRESIDENT TO MAKE SOME SORT OF MEMORIAL TO HONOR THOSE WHO FELL DURING THE ‘88 UPRISING.” –Daw Khin Htay Win, mother of Ma Win Maw Oo, one of the victims of the crackdown on the 1988 pro-democracy uprising
The eighth-standard girl’s final wish is a shocking one in Myanmar society, where a deeply rooted traditional belief has it that a person’s soul can’t rest in peace until his or her name is called out by the family to share their merit with the deceased. “As a mother, I don’t want her soul to wander,” Daw Khin Htay Win said with a deep sigh. “But I have to respect her wish and my husband’s promise to her,” she added, explaining why the family hasn’t shared their merit with their daughter for the last 24 years. Despite Myanmar’s recent democratic reforms, the family said they still don’t feel that they can call for merit to be bestowed upon their daughter’s soul this year. “You cannot say democracy is now flourishing in our country,” U Win Kyu
told The Irrawaddy recently, sitting in front of an enlarged picture of his daughter in the family’s one-room shack on the outskirts of Yangon. “As long as we don’t have a president heartily elected by the people, we cannot call her name to bestow merit upon her soul,” he said. His wife nodded in agreement. Both parents remember Ma Win Maw Oo as a “good” daughter who supplemented the family income by selling sugar-cane and traditional snacks in the streets. She wanted to be a singer inspired by the Myanmar pop star Hay Mar Ne Win (not related to then dictator Gen Ne Win). She hated injustice, so when the country’s people rose up against military rule in 1988, she knew she had to join. “It was her burning sense of [the
U Win Kyu at his home outside Yangon
Ma Win Maw Oo’s death certificate
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TheIrrawaddy
August 2013