Prominent Myanmar human rights lawyer Daw Ywet Nu Aung, who was sentenced to 15 year of hard labor by the junta for helping political prisoners obtain legal aid, has been awarded the Ludovic Trarieux International Human Rights Prize for 2024.
The prize is awarded annually by a European association of rights lawyers—the Institut des droits de l’homme des avocats européens (IDHAE)—to a lawyer defending human rights globally. The first was presented in 1985 to Nelson Mandela, who was then also in jail.
Daw Ywat Nu Aung is the 29th recipient.
The IDHAE said recipients like the Mandalay-based lawyer have “illustrated with [their] activity or [their] suffering, the defence of human rights, of defence rights, the supremacy of law, the struggle against racism and intolerance in any form”.
The award ceremony takes place on the last day of the IDHAE conference in Rome on Friday.
The National Unity Government’s Human Rights Minister U Aung Myo Min will accept it on behalf of Daw Ywet Nu Aung, who is in Mandalay’s Obo prison, the NUG said.
Daw Ywet Nu Aung was a member of the defense team of Dr. Zaw Myint Maung, the former Mandalay Region chief minister and vice chairman of the ousted National League for Democracy (NLD), who died in junta custody earlier this month.
She has also represented other prominent NLD figures detained by the junta, including NLD chair U Win Htein, and is a senior NLD official for Mandalay. In 2019, she came to prominence as the lawyer for “Victoria”, a toddler who was sexually assaulted in the capital Naypyitaw.
Daw Ywet Nu Aung was arrested by the junta in April 2022 on trumped-up charges under the Counter-Terrorism Law and was sentenced to 15 years’ imprisonment with hard labor eight months later. She is being held incommunicado at Obo prison.
“She is a human rights lawyer who has fought against the injustices perpetrated by the terrorist military group, upholding proper legal principles against the armed terrorist organization. The unjust punishment meted out to her serves as a testament to how much the terrorist group fears truth and justice,” U Aung Myo Min said.
She was also one of The Irrawaddy’s “10 Women Who Inspired Us in 2020” for her “outstanding legal work”.