Phyu Phyu Thin ( my, ဖြူဖြူသင်း, ; born 23 December 1971) is a Burmese politician and HIV/

AIDS Human immunodeficiency virus infection and acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (HIV/AIDS) is a spectrum of conditions caused by infection with the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), a retrovirus. Following initial infection an individual ma ...

activist who served as a

House of Representatives House of Representatives is the name of legislative bodies in many countries and sub-national entitles. In many countries, the House of Representatives is the lower house of a bicameral legislature, with the corresponding upper house often c ...

MP for

Mingala Taungnyunt Township Mingala Taungnyunt Township ( my, မင်္ဂလာ‌တောင်ညွန့် မြို့နယ် ; also spelled Mingalar Taung Nyunt) is a township of Yangon, Myanmar. Located in the east-central part of the city, the township con ...

from 2012 until her removal from office in the

2021 Myanmar coup d'état A coup d'état in Myanmar began on the morning of 1 February 2021, when democratically elected members of the country's ruling party, the National League for Democracy (NLD), were deposed by the Tatmadaw—Myanmar's military—which then ves ...

Political imprisonment

On May 21, 2007, Phyu Phyu Thin was arrested by police in

Yangon Yangon ( my, ရန်ကုန်; ; ), formerly spelled as Rangoon, is the capital of the Yangon Region and the largest city of Myanmar (also known as Burma). Yangon served as the capital of Myanmar until 2006, when the military government ...

for organizing a prayer rally to call for the release of detained National League for Democracy leader

Aung San Suu Kyi Aung San Suu Kyi (; ; born 19 June 1945) is a Burmese politician, diplomat, author, and a 1991 Nobel Peace Prize laureate who served as State Counsellor of Myanmar (equivalent to a prime minister) and Minister of Foreign Affairs from 2 ...

. Never told what crime she had committed, she was held for more than a month, and was released on July 2, 2007. As an activist, Phyu Phyu Thin has been an outspoken critic of the

State Peace and Development Council The State Peace and Development Council ( my, နိုင်ငံတော် အေးချမ်းသာယာရေး နှင့် ဖွံ့ဖြိုးရေး ကောင်စီ ; abbreviated SPDC or , ) was the offi ...

, which she says is understating the number of HIV and AIDS cases in

Myanmar Myanmar, ; UK pronunciations: US pronunciations incl. . Note: Wikipedia's IPA conventions require indicating /r/ even in British English although only some British English speakers pronounce r at the end of syllables. As John Wells explai ...

. She operates a clinic in Yangon that provides treatment, medicine and counseling to HIV and AIDS patients. The

United States Department of State The United States Department of State (DOS), or State Department, is an executive department of the U.S. federal government responsible for the country's foreign policy and relations. Equivalent to the ministry of foreign affairs of other na ...

also called for Phyu Phyu Thin's release. While in detention, Phyu Phyu Thin staged a

hunger strike A hunger strike is a method of non-violent resistance in which participants fast as an act of political protest, or to provoke a feeling of guilt in others, usually with the objective to achieve a specific goal, such as a policy change. Most ...

, taking only liquids for about one week. Her family, which had not been told where she was being held, said it would file a missing person's case with police. Phyu-Phyu-Thin-HIV-Hospice

Phyu Phyu Thin has previously been detained in 2000, after she and other Suu Kyi supporters were bundled away by police from a rally for Suu Kyi. She was held for a time in Insein prison.

International recognition

In 2007,

People in Need People in Need (PIN) ( cz, Člověk v tísni) is a Czech nonprofit, non-governmental organisation based in Prague, Czech Republic. PIN implements humanitarian relief and long term development projects, educational programmes, and human rights pr ...

awarded Phyu Phyu Thin, along with fellow prisoners

Su Su Nway Su Su Nway (, ; born 1971; also known as Su Su Nwe) is a Burmese democracy activist and political prisoner. In 2005, she became the first Burmese national to successfully sue local government officials under a 1999 law on forced labour. Force ...

and

Nilar Thein Nilar Thein ( my, နီလာသိန်း, ) (born 4 March 1972) is a Burmese democracy activist and political prisoner imprisoned from 2008 to 2012 at Thayet prison in Burma's Magway Region. Amnesty International considered her a prisoner ...

, their Homo Homini Award.

Political career

Phyu Phyu Thin was elected for a parliamentary seat in the lower house (

Pyithu Hluttaw The Pyithu Hluttaw ( my, ပြည်သူ့ လွှတ်တော်, ; House of Representatives) is the ''de jure'' lower house of the Pyidaungsu Hluttaw, the bicameral legislature of Myanmar (Burma). It consists of 440 members, of whic ...

)'s Mingala Taungnyunt constituency, in 2012 by-elections. In the

2015 Myanmar general election General elections were held in Myanmar on 8 November 2015, with the National League for Democracy winning a supermajority of seats in the combined national parliament. Voting occurred in all constituencies, excluding seats appointed by the ...

, re-elect

MP for

References

1972 births Burmese activists Burmese prisoners and detainees Living people Members of Pyithu Hluttaw HIV/AIDS activists Burmese democracy activists {{Myanmar-bio-stub