Ludu Daw Amar - Famous Dissident

Famous Dissident

Daw Amar had been very outspoken against the military regime particularly in her later years. She was arrested together with her husband and their youngest son Nyein Chan in 1978, after her second son Po Than Gyaung went underground to join the Communist Party of Burma (current spokesman for the CPB) just like his late brother Soe Win before him in 1963. Daw Amar and Nyein Chan were not released for more than a year from prison until later in 1979 after U Hla had been released. Nyein Chan was re-arrested in December 1989 this time to spend nearly 10 years in prison. Po Than Gyaung, now living in exile in Yunnan, would never see his mother again.

U Hla died in 1982 after 43 years of marriage, five children and six grandchildren. The Ludu couple had been one of the best known husband-and-wife teams among the Burmese literati. Daw Amar suffered another loss when her printing plants and warehouses burnt down in the great fire of 1984 that wiped out the heart of Mandalay. Since she turned 70 in 1985, Daw Amar's birthday had been celebrated by the world of art and literature in Burma every year. The event had become an unofficial convention of dissidents under the watchful eyes of the ever present Military Intelligence Service, normally taking place at Taung Laylone Monastery by the shores of Taungthaman Lake in Amarapura near Mandalay until November 2006 when the venue had to be changed under pressure from the authorities. She remained active in public life and was instrumental in founding the Byamazo Luhmuyay Athin (Mutual Voluntary Aid Association) in 1998 engaged in helping poor families with the cost of healthcare and funeral arrangements. She had been called 'Mother of the People' and 'Grand Old Lady'. In a society where old age is revered, most people would address her as Amei (Mother) the same as she would refer to herself according to Burmese custom.

"For those of us who don't dance to the tune of the authorities, we must be creative in what we write to get our message across" she said confirming that there was no freedom of press in Burma. She regretted that she had to give up journalism, and could only write about tradition and culture. In her articles collected later into "Mother's Words of Old", she bemoaned the loosening of social cohesion, morals, and traditional values in dress and manner which she blamed on economic disorder, consumerism and globalisation, and Chinese immigration. She once wrote that the Chinese had occupied Mandalay without firing a shot, and had dubbed the present Lawpan (boss in Chinese) era; she felt as if Mandalay was an undeclared colony of Yunnan Province. Daw Amar was a staunch defender of Burmese history, culture, religion and sovereignty embodied in her birthplace, the last royal capital of Burma, Mandalay - thus broadly nationalistic, religious and ethnocentric traditionalist in her perspective, and yet she had been in the forefront of modernising the written language, fostering mutual understanding and friendship between the dominant Bamar and the ethnic minorities in tandem with her husband, promoting sex education and public awareness of the HIV/AIDS problem, and voicing complaints regarding unpaid labour contributions of women in society.

Ludu Daw Amar died on 7 April 2008 at the age of 92. Her home was Ludu Taik in Mandalay with her second daughter Tin Win (b. 1947) in charge of the publishing business and her youngest son Nyein Chan (writer Nyi Pu Lay - b. 1952) and his family. Her oldest daughter Than Yin Mar (b. 1943), a retired professor of medicine who has also started writing assuming one of her mother's old noms de plume Mya Myint Zu, looked after her health. She was survived by her two sons, two daughters and six grandchildren.