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Toe Lwin, right, listens as his descriptions of working for democracy in Burma are translated by...
BERKELEY -- Toe Lwin was riding in the back of a pickup truck through Myanmar's rural countryside almost seven years ago when a mob of armed thugs surrounded the vehicle.He jumped out, ran to the cab and guarded the door protecting the truck's most famous passenger: Aung San Suu Kyi, Nobel Peace laureate and leader of the democratic opposition challenging Myanmar's military regime.
For this, attackers bludgeoned Toe Lwin and left him unconscious in a nearby paddy field. He can still trace three long scars that cross the top of his head. Suu Kyi might have been assassinated, he said, had her driver not raced ahead that night and away from the danger.
The 38-year-old Lwin will be sharing this story and many others -- he was detained 15 times as a dissident political activist in Myanmar, once for almost two years -- in a weekend gathering of Burmese exiles in Berkeley.
Their meeting is timely. This week, the Myanmar government announced it will continue to ban Suu Kyi and thousands of jailed members of her party, the National League for Democracy, from participating in upcoming national elections. It did, however, allow the party to reopen political offices that had been closed since the 2003 attack on Suu Kyi.
Most Myanmar exiles, who still refer to the country by its old name, Burma, believe that Suu Kyi would be the nation's leader if the government allowed her to compete.
"If it was a free and fair election, she would win," said Nyunt Than, an Albany resident and president of the Burmese American Democratic Alliance. "People love her. But because the constitution is drawn up by the regime, all the opposition is crushed. People have basically given up."
Suu Kyi has been under house arrest for the better part of 20 years. She had been free for about a year and was traveling across the country on an outreach campaign when the crowd attacked her entourage in May 2003. Activists, though they cannot prove it, believe the ambush was premeditated and orchestrated by the government. The army arrested and jailed Suu Kyi, Toe Lwin and numerous other activists after the violence, charging them with inciting it.
"Whenever she is out, courage comes to the people and they rally around her," Lwin said through an interpreter Thursday. "That's why the regime doesn't want to let her out."
After years of organizing Myanmar's youth democracy movement, Lwin, fearing for his life, finally fled the country in 2007, shortly before the mass democracy protest by monks and students that has been dubbed the Saffron Revolution. He moved to San Francisco last year, joining a community of thousands of Myanmar exiles who live in the Bay Area.
A number of those exiles hope to raise awareness for their cause and money for the Myanmar people, both those inside Myanmar and the thousands of refugees at the Thai border, in an event to be held on Saturday.
"Burma used to be the richest country in the region with plenty of resources. Now the middle-class is wiped out," Than said. "They need any kind of help and support we can provide."
Along with Toe Lwin, the speakers include Sein Win, political leader of the exile movement. The event is from 6 to 10 p.m. at the Berkeley Fellowship of Unitarian Universalists Hall, 1924 Cedar St., Berkeley.
