Let me tell you about @aapp_burma & co-founder Ko Bo Kyi. Bo Kyi was a college student when he was arrested & he spent 10 years in Insein prison for participating in 8888 protests. That’s where he taught himself English by writing words in the dirt on the floor of his cell. /1 https://twitter.com/benjaminnorton/status/1380190759828262917
After he escaped from Burma in 1999, all he wanted to do was find a way to help the thousands of pol prisoners who remained & their families. That desire became @aapp_burma. It has been documenting the situation of Burma’s political prisoners & providing humanitarian assistance/2
to them & their families for 22 years. They also worked with Johns Hopkins School of Public Health to develop a state of the art methodology for mental health & trauma counseling specifically designed for Burma’s former political prisoners and their families. Through this /3
program, they’ve provided counseling to thousands of former pol prisoners and their families. After 2010, when they were able to operate above ground inside Burma, they conducted a national survey of former pol prisoners, discovered that there were thousands who were detained /4
in local facilities who were never counted because they were never tried & sentenced. This survey was used to assist this vulnerable community- many of whom suffered physically, emotionally & financially from decades in prison. There were so many who had been in prison their /5
entire adult lives - what happened in 1988-1990 was the equivalent of arresting the student bodies of Harvard, Yale, and the rest of the Ivy League for protesting and sentencing them to 20 years in maximum security prisons after closed military trials. The people who did that /6
in 1988 are the same Tatmadaw that launched the Feb 1 coup. And everyone in Burma knows this, and has tremendous respect & admiration for @aapp_burma’s work.
But sure - you go ahead and keep saying that it is all just some made up plot by a bunch of CIA proxies.
You can follow @KelleyCurrie.
Tip: mention @twtextapp on a Twitter thread with the keyword “unroll” to get a link to it.

Latest Threads Unrolled: