Ma Thida: Observer of unfreedom and doctor between Burma and Germany
– Burma
Ma Thida (*1966) is a Burmese physician, writer, human rights activist, and former political prisoner. She has published books under the pseudonym Suragamika, which means “a leading brave traveler with Thida.” In Myanmar (Burma), she is best known as a public intellectual whose books address the country’s political situation. She has worked as a journalist and editor. As a surgeon, she served at the Muslim Free Hospital, which provides free care for the poor. She studied surgery and has been writing since a young age: “I wanted to become a writer because I wanted to share what I observe around me, like poverty.”
In 1993, she was sentenced to twenty years in Insein Prison for “endangering public peace, contact with illegal organizations, and distribution of unlawful literature.” She actively supported Aung San Suu Kyi, Nobel Peace Prize laureate and founder of Myanmar’s main opposition party. In prison, Ma Thida contracted tuberculosis. At the same time, she received several international human rights awards, including the Reebok Human Rights Award (1996) and the PEN/Barbara Goldsmith Freedom to Write Award (1996). As she says, “Without vipassana (Buddhist meditation), I would not have survived the unspeakable hardships I faced in prison.”
After five and a half years, she was released in 1999 on “humanitarian grounds.” The main reasons were her deteriorating health, along with growing political pressure and advocacy from human rights organizations such as Amnesty International and PEN International. She later became president of PEN Myanmar and was again awarded the PEN/Barbara Goldsmith Freedom to Write Award.
Between 2008 and 2010, she lived in the United States as a writer-in-residence. Her first book, The Sunflower, was published in Burma in 1999, though foreign editions were banned. Roadmap (2012) is a fictional account based on real events in Burmese politics. She also published a memoir in Burmese titled Sanchaung, Insein, Harvard. In 2016, she received the Disturbing the Peace award, given to writers who share the ideals of Václav Havel and presented by the Václav Havel Library Foundation in New York.