At first, you wouldn’t know he’s a fighter.





Visiting U Han Shin Win at his humble house in Yangon’s Mayangone Township, my first impression is the opposite – that of a calm man, with a certain tiredness buried deep in his gaze. He sits in a wooden rattan chair in the living room next to his office, wearing blue trainer pants and a plain, white Polo shirt. His glasses hang down in front of his chest at a ribbon, available at a moment’s notice. His wife comes in from time to time with fresh tea.

It is only after peering into his surroundings that one sees traces of Han Shin Win’s remarkable life. Over there on the desk rests a laptop and tablet, both drowning amid a cavalcade of documents, letters and legal complaints. Behind him, on the bookshelf, rests titles such as Atlas of Human Rights, Agricultural Law, and Webster’s New World Dictionary.

These are not the subjects of a calm man. At least not in Myanmar.

“My daughters always complained about the amount of books which beleaguered our home,” Shin Win says with a grin.

Part-home, part legal office – only on weekends does Shin Win sit at the small desk with stacks of paper before him. During the week, he spends most of his time in the small villages that dot Shan State, Magwe Region and Tanintharyi Region, fighting legal battles for poor farmers whose land has been confiscated.

Be it the Tatmadaw, private investors, the Border Guard Force, leaders of ethnic minorities or regional officers, anyone who tries to take advantage of the uneducated farmers is liable to run into Shin Win. He challenges claimants with an extensive knowledge of Myanmar law and an even broader network of political and civil society groups; he also conducts measurements with a portable GPS to collect proof of ownership as evidence in court.

His friends call him the “jungle lawyer”– Shin Win, ever humble, prefers the nomenclature “pro bono lawyer”.





“I did not become a lawyer to earn money in the first place, but out of pride and the ambition to foster social change,” he says.

A math genius growing up in hardship

Shin Win never intended on a life in law. Born in 1945 in Yesagyo on the crossing of the Chindwin and the Ayeyarwady river in Magwe Region, he was the only child to survive early childhood out of 10 siblings. His father earned K1500 per day as a masseur, while Shin Win worked to help his illiterate mother collect firewood and carry water from nearby ponds. Their home consisted of a small wooden house, where he slept together with his parents on a bench. Despite the hardscrabble upbringing, little Shin Win attended school and studied at night by the light of a turpentine lamp. The one pen is his possessioon required him to mix the ink himself out of indigo plants.

Through schooling, he discovered his natural talent for mathematics and his teacher motivated him to apply for studies at Rangoon University. At that time the socialist government promoted scholarships for studies in natural sciences, as they were seen as an important pillar to a socialist society. Shin Win secured one such grant by scoring 100 out of a possible 100 points on the mathematics exam, going on to move to the big city and to earn the first degree in his family. He keeps the subject as a hobby until that day, even if his current activities have nothing to do with natural sciences at all.

Shin Win probably could have become a maths professor at the university and lived a comfortable life. But things changed rapidly in 1974 when he started his political engagement as a student union activist. Thousands of students protested in December 1974 over the shabby treatment of then-UN-secretary-general U Thant by the Ne Win military government. A famed intellectual, U Thant was widely beloved by the people, who demonstrated for six days in outrage. The military silenced them, however, on December 12, 1974, shooting dozens of students and putting unknown thousands into jail. During the protests, Shin Win became a well-known leader, a status that led to an eight-year sentence in Rangoon’s notorious Insein prison. He says he never had a chance consult a lawyer or contact his family. And as a political prisoner he was discriminated against wherever possible.

“We were 13 prisoners in a cell 10 feet by 10 feet small, without drinking water despite the heat, without access to sanitation despite the sweat, without access to medicine despite suffering from infections,” he says. “It was hell but gave me strength for my later life.”

Law studies behind bars

At Insein prison, he met with fellow political activist and lawyer U Ye Htoon, who studied law in the USA, before coming back to Myanmar. Both intellectuals with corresponding political ideas, the renegade inmates got along well, and soon Htoon agreed to teach Shin Win law and English. “I didn’t learn English at University and if I hadn’t met U Ye Htoon, we couldn’t communicate as we do right now ,” Shin Win says in fluent English.

When he was released early in 1980 Shin Win got back to university to take his certificate in Mathematics, while at the same time studying law to obtain an advocates licence. In 1985, he started to practice as a lawyer in his hometown Yesagyo, while teaching his neighbours in mathematics outside of office hours. But three years later the ”8888 uprisings” began with hundreds of thousands of students, monks and people from all walks of life protesting against general Ne Win’s socialist regime and his catastrophic economic agenda throughout the country. Shin Win, still a political activist in Yesagyo, was sent to prison without trial for the second time– for “security reasons” as the military junta explained. As a political prisoner, he spent over 8 months in a solitary cell.

“To bear the conditions, I drew mathematical formulas on the cell wall with a brick stone and I did a lot of meditation.” For two and a half years he couldn’t contact his wife and two daughters. Shin Win says his time in prison gave him mental strength to support other sufferers later on. “After my two terms in prison, nothing could scare me anymore.”

After his release, he restarted working as a lawyer in his hometown, but in 2000 he moved to Yangon to provide a livelihood to his eldest daughter while she was studying Economics at his alma mater. He started as an accountant for a money lender, but soon became a legal advisor for the company. His job made him feel miserable: He had to sue farmers for debts they owed to the lender, even if they were too poor to repay them. In 2007, Cyclone Nargis left hundreds of thousands of farmers without much more than the clothes they wore. The lending company went bankrupt and Shin Win made a promise to himself: “After Nargis I realised that the government does not care for these farmers at all. It was then when I started with my pro bono work.”

Step up for those without a say

“Most lawyers spend all their time in the office, but they don’t know much about the hardships of the people outside,” Shin Win explains. Take, for example, the case of a man in the small villages between Yaksauk and Taunggyi in the Inle Lake region. There, U Myint Aung, a 63-year-old from Yepu village, poured gasoline on his body and set himself alight on May 22, 2015.

“He was a lonely man without wife and family, and his piece of land was the only asset he had to survive.” Shin Win says. “He was removed from his land by the military without compensation because they wanted to build barracks on it.” Neighbours of U Myint Aung who were evicted as well wanted to take back hold on their land. Therefore they tried to sue the Tatmadaw for illegal land confiscation, but meanwhile the army had sold the land to a private investor, “and ironically they now sued the farmers for trespassing,” Shin Wins says. This changed the situation of the farmers dramatically, because now they had to defend themselves in court. Shin Win took on their case and currently defends 23 farmers sued by the Tatmadaw. Their cases, and scores more like it, rely on Shin Win’s free knowledge and contacts as their only hope for getting their land back.

But his advocacy work comes at a price. When he was defending villagers in the Myeik region against a money lender who cheated them for their land titles, someone tried to shoot him with a gun. Fortunately the attacker missed his target and was chased away by the villagers.

“I am not scared. The people I work with at the grassroots are my security. They do whatever it needs to protect me, because they trust in me.”