Veronica Tsepkalo is interviewing a special guest - Wai Wai Nu.
Wai Wai Nu is a human rights activist, and according to the BBC, one of the world's most influential women a. In 2017, Time magazine named her one of the Leaders of the New Generation.
Like Belarus, Myanmar (Burma) has long suffered from an oppressive regime that regularly sent people to jail for their political views. Wai Wai Nu's family met the same fate: when she was 18 years old, her father was arrested.
He was a politician elected to parliament who advocated for the democratization of Myanmar. For this, he was sentenced to 47 years in prison, while the rest of the family was sentenced to 17 years in prison. They were accused of creating a threat to the national security, and the court's verdict against them is strikingly similar to the absurd rulings handed down in Belarusian “courts”. Just like in Myanmar, in Belarus, participating in political life is a crime.
Wai Wai Nu’s stories about her life in prison are terrifyingly detailed. She and her family were in a cell shared with 150 people. Inmates did not have access to water, adequate food, beds, or blankets. They lived in unsanitary cells.
Wai Wai Nu was released when she was 25 years old. And since then, not a day has gone by when she did not fight for the rights of others, attempting to change the system in Myanmar (Burma). She founded the Women's Peace Network and the Yangon Youth Center, and has today become one of the most prominent human rights activists both regionally and worldwide.
Wai Wai Nu's story is one about the struggle for both one's own and someone else's freedom, and about a country with the regime, which is so similar to the Lukashenka one.