The Freedom Chat: A Video Conversation with Ma Thida

The Freedom Chat is a new video series by Sampsonia Way featuring interviews with journalists and other media workers facing censorship and repression in their home countries. In these Q&A’s, conducted via video chat, journalists talk with Sampsonia Way about press freedom, anti-free speech legislation, and exile.

In the ninth installment of The Freedom Chat, editorial intern Olivia Mancing spoke to Dr. Ma Thida, a surgeon, human rights activist, and writer. In 1993 she was sentenced to 20 years in prison for “endangering public peace, having contact with illegal organisations, and distributing unlawful literature” due to her ongoing collaboration with Aung San Suu Kyi. After five and a half years she was released on humanitarian grounds and has since published a prison memoir, Sanchaung, Insein, Harvard.