Three political candidates were talking to members of their party’s campaign team in a house in Phaungka, a village in southern Rakhine state’s Taungup township, when a group of armed men suddenly burst into the room.

The three candidates were members of the ruling National League for Democracy (NLD), and the dozen or so men who stormed in on them were from the Arakan Army (AA), an ethnic armed group engaged in an ongoing conflict with Myanmar’s military. 

This dramatic scene unfolded on October 14, just three and a half weeks before the November 8 election that the NLD would go on to win by a landslide.

The candidates were running for seats in the state parliament and the upper and lower houses of the Union parliament: Min Aung, the only man in the group, was a sitting MP in the state parliament, while Chit Chit Chaw and Ni Ni May Myint were running for the Amyotha Hluttaw and Pyithu Hluttaw, respectively.

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All three spoke to Myanmar Now recently about their 79-day ordeal, which ended on January 1, long after the election date had come and gone.

Pandemonium in Phaungka

The village of Phaungka is on an island of the same name, located about 15 miles west of Taungup township in southern Rakhine. Like other townships in this part of the state, Taungup is an NLD stronghold.

Ni Ni May Myint, the 32-year-old incumbent candidate for the lower house seat, recalled the moment a normal day on the campaign trail turned into sheer mayhem.

“We were all just sitting at the dining table when they came in with their weapons. They told us not to move. My first thought was that it had to be some kind of joke. It happened so suddenly, I didn’t have a chance to think about what was actually happening,” she said.

That air of unreality soon passed, however, when one of the armed men slapped Min Aung on the face and the whole place erupted with shouts and curses.

“There was a small sleeping area for us two women. We were held separately there under constant watch from security guards. They followed us wherever we went,” said Ni Ni May Myint, one of the three captives

Once the turmoil settled down, the armed men demanded that the three candidates identify themselves and then hand over their phones and other belongings. They then marched their captives out onto the beach and blindfolded them as they boarded two waiting boats.

For the next few hours, they travelled in darkness until they reached a village at around 8pm. They spent the night there, and then resumed their journey by motorboat the next day. 

After another full day of travel and another night in an unknown village, a car came to pick them up the following morning. They drove until they reached the end of the road, and then they had to start walking.

Two days later, after sleeping rough in the jungle along the way, they arrived at the camp where they would be held for the next 10 days.

“There was a small sleeping area for us two women. We were held separately there under constant watch from security guards. They followed us wherever we went,” said Ni Ni May Myint.

They were then moved again, this time to a location where they had even more basic accommodation. For the next three weeks, the two women stayed in primitive shelters consisting of little more than logs and bamboo mats, while Min Aung was held elsewhere. Then they returned to the camp where they had stayed for 10 days at the foot of a mountain.

It wasn’t the first time the AA had kidnapped someone from the NLD. At the end of 2019, they detained Ye Thein, the party’s chair in Buthidaung township. Two weeks later, he was dead—allegedly, according to the AA, because he had been shot during a clash with the Myanmar military.

As they listened to artillery shells explode not far from the camp where they were being held prisoner, the three captives began to fear that they might share Ye Thein’s fate.

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Beatings and meagre meals

A few days after they seized the three NLD candidates, the AA started interrogating each of them separately. They asked them about their party activities, military issues, and personal matters, said Ni Ni May Myint.

“They just asked questions and wrote it all down. They didn’t seem to have anything specific or important that they wanted to know,” she said.

Regarding her own background, Ni Ni May Myint told them that she became interested in politics after the 2007 Saffron Revolution. The following year, she joined a demonstration on the 20th anniversary of the four-eights uprising of August 8, 1988. She was arrested for this and spent the next three years in Buthidaung prison.

“I had to answer their questions, and if they weren’t satisfied with what I said, they beat me. My back was beaten 15 times,” said Min Naing, one of the three captives  

Though she was no stranger to captivity, Ni Ni May Myint had good reason to suffer even more as a prisoner of the AA than she did as an imprisoned young activist more than a decade ago. She said her greatest concern was not for her own safety, but for her husband and four-year-old daughter in Yangon.

“They say that those who stay behind worry more than those who go away. That’s also true for those who are outside” of prison, she said. “I couldn’t stop thinking about how they must feel. As for myself, I just tried to take care of my health as best I could, and adapted as much as possible to my circumstances, despite the problems with our accommodation.”

Unlike his female colleagues, Min Aung was also subjected to beatings as part of his questioning. For two consecutive days—October 29 and 30—his captors demanded to know what role, if any, he played in the campaign against the AA during his two-year tenure as Rakhine state’s minister for municipal affairs. 

“I had to answer their questions, and if they weren’t satisfied with what I said, they beat me. My back was beaten 15 times,” the former political prisoner told Myanmar Now.

For 33-year-old Chit Chit Chaw, the greatest hardship was having barely enough to eat from one day to the next. She said their two meals a day always consisted of the same thing—a vegetable known locally as “hin hlaw”.

“After eating at 7 or 8 o’clock in the morning and then going hungry all day, you’re wondering if they will give you anything extra for dinner. But every time, it’s just a small dish of hin hlaw, the same as before,” she said.

To get through their ordeal, the captives talked about their families and shared their feelings. 

“Ni Ni talked about her daughter. I talked about my mother. We consoled each other. Sometimes it brought tears to my eyes and sometimes I got angry,” recalled Chit Chit Chaw.

Over time, even a few of their guards relaxed and became less severe in their attitude towards them.

“As time passed, they became a little friendlier towards us. We told each other political jokes and laughed together,” said Chit Chit Chaw.

“In a situation where even political candidates can be apprehended in this way, we can’t be surprised if the new generation is afraid to get involved with politics,” said Chit Chit Chaw, one of the three captives

Another way they got through their long, tedious days of confinement was by reading. Their captors provided them with enough books to keep them occupied for most of their 79 days as “guests” of the AA. 

Most were non-fiction books with political themes: Ni Ni May Myint said she read some 50 books, on everything from Mossad, the Israeli secret service agency, to Gandhi and Rakhine history.

Released at last

The first sign that they were about to be released came at around 11am on December 30, when they were told to pack up and get ready for a trek up the mountain.

The return trip was as long and tiring as the one that brought them to the camp more than two months earlier. Once again, they had to walk for two full days and spend a night in the jungle.

Finally, in the early hours of January 1, they reached a road at the foot of a mountain where a car was waiting for them. It took them to Mee Chaung Tat, a village in Myebon township, some 150 miles away from where they were captured.

After they arrived at the village, they rested at a restaurant until around 2:30pm, when an AA official handed them over to Brig-Gen Soe Tint. They were then taken to Sittwe by helicopter at around 5pm.

A few days after their release, all three were safely returned to their homes and reunited with their families.

For Ni Ni May Myint, who during her darkest moments feared she would never see her family again, it was a happy day when she could hold her daughter again. Just days earlier, when she called her husband from Sittwe, she was distressed to learn that her child didn’t recognize her voice after her long absence. 

This wasn’t the only disappointment that she felt upon returning to civilization. While she and her two colleagues were being held in a remote location against their will, their main rivals, the Arakan National Party (ANP) won all three seats that they were contesting in Taungup.

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They were convinced that their own party would have won again, as they had in 2015, if they hadn’t been taken prisoner by the AA. Even under these extraordinary circumstances, the NLD lost Taungup’s seat in the Amyotha Hluttaw by a margin of just 600 votes. 

“I think it isn’t acceptable for revolutionary forces to torture innocent people in this way. I think they are going astray in the cause of the revolution,” said Monywa Aung Shin, the secretary of the NLD’s central information committee

Nonetheless, they congratulated the victorious ANP candidates and said they were sure the new MPs would make valuable contributions to the development of Taungup township. They also vowed to continue their own work with the NLD.

At the same time, they acknowledged that what had happened to them would likely have a chilling effect on political participation in the state.

“In a situation where even political candidates can be apprehended in this way, we can’t be surprised if the new generation is afraid to get involved with politics,” said Chit Chit Chaw.

A positive message

To encourage young people, and especially women, to remain interested in politics, Chit Chit Chaw wrote on her Facebook pages about the lessons she learned from her experience. 

She noted, for example, that she encountered women soldiers in the jungle, and was greatly impressed by their eagerness to improve themselves, not just through military training, but also through reading. It was very gratifying, she said, to see women soldiers holding books.

Min Aung also recalled some of his exchanges with his captors. On one occasion, he said, he had a conversation with a young soldier who spoke freely with him because there were no officers present. 

The young soldier said he was upset when he was told that the AA was negotiating a ceasefire with the Tatmadaw. He said he wasn’t happy about the prospect of an end to the fighting because a number of his comrades had died fighting for the cause of independence.

When the soldier told him that he might run away to the city to hide his shame at not succeeding in their goal of winning freedom for the Rakhine people, Min Aung told him he had nothing to be ashamed of. He was fighting for something that he believed in, he said, and even if he didn’t achieve it, the struggle still had meaning.   

But the NLD leadership was less sympathetic towards the AA when it issued a statement after the release of the three captives claiming that their detention was “politically, militarily and revolutionarily a requirement” of the Rakhine struggle. 

Monywa Aung Shin, the secretary of the NLD’s central information committee, called the remark meaningless.

“I think it isn’t acceptable for revolutionary forces to torture innocent people in this way. I think they are going astray in the cause of the revolution,” he said.