AI has recently learned that U Win Tin, a founder of the National League for Democracy and the editor of a daily newspaper now in his early 60s, is very ill and may die if he does not receive surgery. He is held in Insein Prison, along with hundreds of other political prisoners, and is reportedly being denied proper medical treatment for a potentially life-threatening illness. He was arrested in July 1989: the military government initally alleged that he had urged the NLD to adopt civil disobedience to defy martial law. However, on 3 October 1989 he was sentenced to three years on charges of having harboured an NLD member whose companion had had a criminal abortion. He was due for release in July 1992 but reports suggest that he has been given another 7-year sentence.
