Prisoner of conscience Su Su Nway was released in Myanmar’s latest mass prisoner amnesty, after sustained campaigning by human rights organizations including Amnesty International. She thanked activists who drew attention to her case and campaigned for her release.

Labor rights activist Su Su Nway, 39, had been serving a seven and a half-year sentence for treason and other vaguely defined security offenses at the time of her release.

Her acts of political protest even while in prison resulted in her dispatch to a jail near the Nagaland Indian border, far from her family and medical treatment, despite her heart problem. There was later a reported tuberculosis outbreak in that prison.

She had been arrested in November 2007 in the wake of the ‘Saffron Revolution,’ after putting up an anti-government banner near a hotel where the UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Myanmar was staying.

Su Su Nway was the first person in Myanmar to sue the government successfully for subjecting her and her village to forced labor. The government imprisoned her for eight months in retaliation.

Upon being released in 2006 from that first imprisonment, she said to the Democratic Voice of Burma, a dissident media outlet based outside the country: “I take my prison uniform with me because I know that I will have to come back to jail until Burma gets democracy."

Though Su Su Nway has been successfully freed from wrongful imprisonment, there are still several remaining prisoners of conscience in Myanmar. Amnesty International is happy for her release and will continue to demand authorities to immediately and unconditionally release remaining prisoners of conscience.