Sean Turnell Spent 650 Days in a Myanmar Prison After he was Mislabelled as a Spy!

For 650 days Sean Turnell was held in Myanmar’s Insein Prison on the trumped-up charge of being a spy. Today Sean joins the podcast to share his incredible story.
In our chat he recounts how he went from being a very cheerful university professor to life in one of the most notorious prisons in South-East Asia. 

Sean shares:
-How the military coup in Myanmar led to him being arrested 
-What life was like inside the 'box' that he was imprisoned in
-What he did to remain sane for the 650 days
-How his wife campaigned tirelessly for his release
-Whether he lives in fear now after sharing his experiences of the Myanmar Military so publicly
-The suffering of the people of Myanmar under a bestial regime that a lot of the world doesn't know about

We were absolutely gripped by Sean's story and still don't understand how he remains so positive! If you'd like to read Sean's book and learn more of his story you can grab it here!

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Life Uncut acknowledges the traditional custodians of country. His lands
were never seated. We pay our respects to their elders
past and present, Always was, always will be Aboriginal Land.
This episode was recorded on de rug Wallamata Land. Hi guys,

(00:23):
and welcome back to another episode of Life. I'm Cut,
I'm Laura, I'm Brittany, and today I am actually so
excited to bring you this episode. And the reason I
say I'm so excited is we're speaking to an amazing man.
He's a professor. He's Australian. His name is Sean Turnell.
Now you might have heard the name Sean Turnell over
the years. We're going to get into his story. But
long story short, he was put into a Me and

(00:46):
Mar prison. It's a political prison of sorts. He was
working over in Me and Mar and basically the military
came one day arrested him for espionage. They said he
was a spy, which if you look at Sean, please
google Sean if you've got the top right now, have
a look at who he is. He's a ball of sunshine.
He's in his sixties and he's not somebody you could

(01:06):
imagine being in prison but he was put in prison
for six hundred and fifty days.

Speaker 2 (01:12):
This is all something that played out during the time
of the military coup in Miamar, and Sean gets into
the history of it. If it's not something that you're
familiar with, all of that will be set up in
the way in which he speaks about it. But it's
his resilience, it is his positivity, it is the outlook
on life that he has for somebody who has experienced
such incredible traumas, who was held in one of the

(01:33):
most dire prisons, and you know this wasn't just a
cell that he was held in. But he speaks about
the box which he was held in, the lack of
stimulus that he received, for the time that he was
held captive, and for not doing anything wrong, for zero
crimes that were committed, but for being held for being
a spy. I think the way in which he speaks
about it his outlook. I struggled to understand how he

(01:55):
was able to get through that ordeal and still come
out of it the resilient person that he is.

Speaker 1 (02:00):
Yeah, and it was a bit of an awakening. I've
always wanted to know the inner workings of a prison
but to sit down with Sean, somebody who did spend
six hundred and fifty days in a prison that is
called insane prison. That's literally the name, to speak about,
what the conditions were like, how they treated him, connection
to the outside, where the embassies helping, What would the
other prisoners like, did he have help? Did he feel

(02:21):
like he was going to die? How did he get
through it? We covered so much in it and coming
from the horse's mouth for me was truly incredible. Sean
Turnell is an honorary Professor of Economics at mcquarie University
and a senior fellow at the Loewie Institute. Now. Sean
spent years trying to help the people of me and Mar,
which is previously known as Burma, turned their economy around.

(02:44):
He served as an advisor to Ung Sansuchi, who is
known for her leadership. She's basically the face of the
fight for democracy. Now, in twenty twenty one, after the
military who Sean was arrested and he spent six hundred
and fifty days in Me and Mar's quite ironically insane prison,
Sean has just released his book, which is called An

(03:04):
Unlikely Prisoner, and he's here today to talk us through
what got him through those grueling six hundred and fifty
days and just how incredible his wife was, how tirelessly
she campaigned for his release. Sean, Welcome to Life Uncut.

Speaker 3 (03:18):
Well, thank you very much for having.

Speaker 2 (03:19):
Me, Sean, I reckon. This is one of the most
insane stories that we've had on the podcast before. And
when we say it's left to field, I mean we've
interviewed people who have been kidnapped in Somalia, We've interviewed
people who have come from colts like, We've done some
crazy stories. But I guess one of the reasons why
yours is so left of field is because there is
so much politics and economy and everything else that goes

(03:42):
along with it. We're going to get into the full backstory,
but it would be remiss of us to let you
get away with not starting the podcast episode in the
way that we do with every single one of our guests.
And that is your most embarrassing story.

Speaker 3 (03:55):
Well, I have many embarrassing stories, but probably the most
relevant was when I was in my early twenties. My
first car was a little green hole in Gemini, and
I absolutely loved this car. And one morning I was
setting off to the UNI. So I was a young
student getting in the car, and my mom come out
to wave me goodbye, and she said, look, just drive

(04:17):
really carefully because you know, people do crazy stuff and
all that. And I said, Mom, don't worry, nothing will
ever happen to me. And then I said touch wood.
I got in the car, drove round the corner and
ran into a tree. All I remember was the screams
of my mum one straight away who heard what had happened.

(04:37):
So I literally touched wood.

Speaker 1 (04:39):
Within so she didn't see it, but she heard it.

Speaker 3 (04:44):
She sure heard it. And I had to live that
down because all of my neighbors saw it, the parents
of my friends. That was just excruciating and referred to
for many many years afterwards.

Speaker 1 (04:56):
Was the car ride off or was it able to
be repaired?

Speaker 3 (05:00):
It was repaired, thankfully, and I then had it for
a decade or more perfect.

Speaker 1 (05:04):
It's right, you gave a really good test drivee They
were good cars.

Speaker 2 (05:07):
Do you know what?

Speaker 1 (05:07):
You're probably the first person sewn in a long time
on Life uncut to have an embarrassing story that wasn't
about pooh. So congratulations, that's a feat. That's a feat
in itself. Sean, let's go back to before your arrest,
how did you find yourself in Burma and how did
you find yourself as an economical advisor for SUCHI.

Speaker 3 (05:26):
So, I'd known the Burmese community here in Australia for
a long time, and I had been helping them and
the whole democracy movement on economics and trying to critique
the military that had ruled the country and misruled the
country for decades. So I got to know the community
quite well, and through them and through my work, I
got to know Angsung Suci, who then invited me to
come over when she finally won office in some big

(05:48):
elections held in twenty fifteen. So yeah, it sort of
began by just associating myself with the refugee community, the
Burmese refugee community here in Australia.

Speaker 2 (05:57):
What was happening in the country at the time, So
just to set up a little bit around like what
was the economical climate, what was the political climate, and
why were you required to be there or why was
your skills necessary?

Speaker 1 (06:10):
Sean's like, how long do we have?

Speaker 2 (06:12):
I know, But I just think that in terms of
people understanding sort of the unrest of what was going on.

Speaker 1 (06:17):
It's quite important.

Speaker 3 (06:19):
Yeah, So Me and Mar or Burma as it used
to be known, has been misruled by the military for
decades and in particularly brutal ways. And that's also you know,
it's been terrible just at a human rights level and
all that, but really bad for the economy as well.
So we're used to this idea of the fast growing
Asian economies, the tigers we often call them. So me

(06:39):
and Ma missed out on that completely. So bad was
the policy making of these generals who really just wanted
to extract resources out of the country basically for themselves
to keep control. So Boemer missed out on all of that.
So when Ongsung Suchi won office in twenty fifteen, almost
priority number one was to catch up to the other
countries in and because I'd worked on Burma, you know,

(07:02):
for thirty years to that point, she said, look, Sean,
is there anyway you can come over and give us
a hand? And so I got the support of my
Yuni mcquari yuni as well as the Australian government, and
within a couple of months of Suchi asking me could
I come over, I was over there in Yangon and
this bizarre capital city called Napidor as well, and then yeah,
set off from there.

Speaker 2 (07:23):
With everything that was happening in terms of human rights
violations at the time. Were you not concerned about going
over there at a time when so many people were
actually fleeing in the country, No.

Speaker 3 (07:32):
I wasn't. Funnily enough, I think the hope was so
great back there in twenty fifteen, and when Suchi took office,
me and Mahra in many ways was a place full
of hope and expectation about the future. People were energized,
particularly the young people who I increasingly worked with while
I was over there. So you know, there were terrible
things taking place all through the time I was there,

(07:54):
but there was this great sense of progress as well,
so it was really just exciting to be a part
of it.

Speaker 1 (08:01):
How did you become an advisor for su Chi? And
how did Suchi get elected into government when she was
under house arrest for the better part of twenty years.

Speaker 3 (08:11):
Yeah, so she was locked away for a long time.
But funnily enough, that was how she heard about me,
because I'd been writing a lot about Burma, and I
wrote a book about Burmer about its monetary and financial history,
which bizarrely, to recall now, was actually serialized by the
BBC Burmese Service. So the BBC used to broadcast into
Burma right through the period of military rule, and so

(08:34):
under house arrest, SUCHI heard my broadcast. So then when
she was finally released from house arrest back in about
twenty ten, for what we thought would be the final time,
she asked her could I come over and see her,
and she told me about how she listened to the book,
which again just surprised the hell out of me. Yeah,
we really just established a rapport over my interest in

(08:57):
me and Ma and its history and all that, but
also over Sherlock Holmes books. She's an obsessive about you,
like Holmes.

Speaker 2 (09:03):
And so was I. What's so funny what was she
in house arrest for for that period of time? I mean,
twenty years is an awfully long time to be under
house arrest.

Speaker 3 (09:12):
Well, just for advocating democracy. So she's the daughter of
one of the founders of the country, one of the
leaders of Burma's independence back in the forties. But she
was very much somebody agitating for freedom and human rights
and justice as well as democracy in Burma. So she
was in prison from eighty eight. She got the Nobel
Peace Prize in nineteen ninety. So she was always this

(09:34):
dissident figure, if you like, but with immense support from
the people in Me and Mah who always know her
as mother Sue like. So she has almost a status
in Burma or Me and Ma that the train scends
politics or anything else.

Speaker 2 (09:49):
What happened in February of twenty twenty one in terms
of the military taking back control.

Speaker 3 (09:55):
Yeah, so Longsung. So she had just won re election
and so we were all up for what we hope
would be a great second term of her government and
to do many more reforms than we'd even be able
to do up to that point. But the military increasingly unhappy.
The military in Me and Mahi has a long history
of misjudging the community, and I think for them that

(10:16):
they were shocked that they did so badly at those elections.
They were sort of shocked, but humiliated and angry, and
I think, taking a little bit of a lead from
Donald Trump in the US, started to say that the
election was rigged and all the rest of it, which
was just absurd. But their anger just slowly built, and
then eventually they undertook this military coup on the first

(10:37):
of February twenty twenty one. They just seized government.

Speaker 1 (10:41):
Was she not at all put off by the fact
that her father, in the same position was assassinated by
the military, assumed military.

Speaker 3 (10:49):
She's a person of immense courage, and a couple of
times through you know, down the decades, the military have
tried to kill it. Notably back in twenty oh three
there was a particular incident known as the depi In massacre,
where a bunch of people around her were killed, but
she was the target. But she managed to escape that.
But likewise, you know, the military would love to eliminate

(11:09):
her if they could, and it's one of the things
why we always worry for her. I worry for her now,
to be honest, but I think they've always stepped back
a little bit, except for those incidents that I mentioned,
just because they know I think the international reaction would
be extreme were they to do that. But it worries
us all, you know. So, but she is a person
of immense courage, and I think her father's example, rather
than frightening her, I think it inspires her.

Speaker 1 (11:32):
Let's talk about the day that you were arrested. Then
how long had you been in me and Mark by
the day you arrested.

Speaker 3 (11:38):
So I'd been there for about five years up to
that point. Although I'd come back to Australia for a
visit and I was going to do some teaching at
a quarry. I was taking a bit of a break actually,
and then COVID hit, so I got stuck in Australia
for a bit. And then finally some relief flights that
were taking people between Australia and me Ma suddenly opened
up still in the middle of COVID, and I got

(12:00):
one of those back to me in mah So and
I'd really only just arrived back, had two weeks of
quarantine at a hotel in Yangon, and the coup took
place the day I got out. Yeah, but effectively five
years up up to the point of the coup.

Speaker 2 (12:13):
What was that day, like, I mean, when the coup happened,
what was happening in the community was their fear?

Speaker 1 (12:19):
Was that outrage? It was a disbelief, like how was
that processed?

Speaker 3 (12:23):
Above all, it was outrage. The people were not frightened,
and they came out on the streets really quickly, and
they really were angry because by then of course, the
country had experienced about five years of democracy. But I
mentioned too, you know, the admiration I've had and still
have for the young people, and they were not going
to stand for their view. I think you could characterize

(12:44):
as you know, they'd seen their country rule by the
military for decades and they were just not going to
have it. You know, this is a new, young, savvy
generation who had seen the world and knew what was
going on. They all had mobile phones and all the
rest of it, and they knew that military ruling me
and Mark was unacceptable. So they came out straight away,

(13:05):
very peacefully, but very vibrant, and lots of banging of
pots and pans through the night, lots of singing again,
you know, really peaceful demonstrations and so on. But yeah,
a real sense of vigor.

Speaker 1 (13:17):
And the military's response to their peaceful demonstrations. Was the
military also peaceful.

Speaker 3 (13:23):
At the beginning, yes, but when I say beginning, only
for a few days, and of course they were still
arresting people even at that time. But then they very
quickly used the guns. It didn't take much much time
at all. They just shot down in cold blood civilians
in the streets and then just continued.

Speaker 2 (13:38):
Too many civilians? Do you know those sort of figures.

Speaker 3 (13:41):
It's really interesting. So we know that definitely about ten
thousand absolutely certified of being killed, but it's probably much more.
It's probably in the leagues of twenty thirty thousand and
similar numbers then of political prisoners as well. So yeah,
so the numbers are really really large.

Speaker 1 (13:59):
Why do you think it is? I mean, we're looking
at what is happening with Gaza and Israel right now
and it is completely consuming every single media outlet in
the world. How does something like that go down and
ten thousand innocent people are shot by the military in
cold blood by their own military and the world isn't
being stopped in its tracks because I don't remember it
being that big.

Speaker 3 (14:19):
A news over here is so frustrating, really frustrating for
me and all my me and my friends here in Australia.
I think partly COVID is responsible because it took place
in the middle of COVID and so even reporters getting
access et cetera to the story was difficult. I think
also conditions in me and mar at that moment were
not that good, but there were already atrocities taking place

(14:41):
in Rakine State against this group called the Rahinga. So
in other words, the story was a bit messy as well.

Speaker 1 (14:47):
And also like, oh, it's just something else happening over there,
because it's you know, they're so corrupt anyway.

Speaker 3 (14:52):
That's right. And then of course, later, you know, we
get the Russian invasion of Ukraine, and then as you mentioned,
Garza and some on, so me and Mile just keeps
slipping down the list of international attention.

Speaker 2 (15:02):
Sean, can you talk us through the day that you
were arrested, what happened in that day and in the
lead up.

Speaker 3 (15:08):
So on that day I got an email from someone
who identified themselves as a secret friend saying that military
intelligence had taken over the hotel and that they had
directed the CCTVs to my door in the hotel and
it was time to go.

Speaker 1 (15:24):
So I just got goosebumps. Imagine opening that email.

Speaker 3 (15:28):
It certainly gave me a pride. At the time, I
sort of half been expecting it, but that didn't make
it any less scary. So the coup had taken place
five days earlier, and I tried to get out at
that point. Well, actually for the first few days I
hadn't I was a little bit complacent, to be honest,
for the first few days, and I was more concerned
to trying to help Burmese friends get out, get to
the border with Thailand and escape. But then I started

(15:50):
to think, and I was getting warnings from the USMB,
the Australian Embassy, other people just saying, Sean, they're going
to come after you. It's time to get out. But
I couldn't get out because again because of COVID, there
was no regular flights in and out of the country. Again,
there were only those official relief flights, and of course
they were completely full by then, so I was waiting.
In fact, ironically enough, at about midnight that previous night,

(16:12):
I'd heard word that I possibly had got a flight
to London, and I was going to get on it
because I thought, Ok, I've really got to get out
of me in mar It.

Speaker 1 (16:20):
Doesn't matter where you go, you like, just get me
on a plane.

Speaker 3 (16:22):
Exactly, didn't matter where.

Speaker 1 (16:24):
Was there a part of you? I mean, you say
there was a part of me that was expecting them
to come for me. But was there another part? Because
I imagine if I was in that position, there's another
part of me that thought I have the US embassy,
I have the Australian embassy on my side. They are
going to protect me, Like, even if they come for me,
I'm going to be Okay, did you have a security blanket?
Faith in our government?

Speaker 3 (16:44):
Very much, So that was always there in the background. Also,
I was a reasonably prominent figure in me and Maha
and known, you know, for the economic reforms and all that,
So grabbing me was a big deal of the military.
And at the back of my mind, I thought, you know,
they're not really going to do that. Why would they
do that. There's nothing to gain from it. It'll just
bring about really substantial negative attention to them. Yeah, so

(17:05):
the rational part of my brain kicked in a little
bit as well. But of course the rational part of
the brain is not that useful in an irrational situation,
you know, So that the military wasn't thinking on rational
lines that this would cause it fast. They just thought, Okay,
that guy, he's the guy who's always on Addis et cetera.

Speaker 1 (17:23):
Spy, Yep, spy, totally, yep.

Speaker 3 (17:25):
He's the guy from MI six, et cetera. So let's
get him.

Speaker 2 (17:29):
So what happened then that day? So you received this
email you tried to get onto a flight, it didn't happen.
Does it just make you a sitting duck?

Speaker 3 (17:38):
Yeah? It did. So after getting the message, I did
two things. I rang the Australian ambassador and said, look,
I think I'm going to be arrested. Then packed my
bag went downstairs. Now he's where I made another mistake.
And this could be because I'm an economist and all
the rest with but I made sure that I settled
the bill first, which meant that I sort.

Speaker 1 (17:56):
Of, Yeah, you line up at the lobby right to
pay the bill, and that could have been the moments
that stopped you.

Speaker 3 (18:04):
I did, And I'd just given my credit card to
the concierge when I could just feel all these police
and military just forming around me and behind me. But
the strange coder of that, or not so strange, the
frustrating code of that with the hotel still charged the
card to make you add insult to injury. Yeah, but
by then, of course, you know that they'd surrounded me

(18:26):
and asked me to sit down and told me that
they had lots of questions to ask and all that.

Speaker 1 (18:31):
And so did you still understand at this point that
you were being arrested, even when they popped you in
the van to take your way, Did you still think
it was temporary. They're going to ask me the questions
and they're going to let me go.

Speaker 3 (18:42):
Sure? Did I thought it was just about giving me
a fright and sending a message to not just me
but other foreigners that you are not immune. This is serious.
You got to play ball wearing charge now. So yeah,
So I still thought at that stage it was really horrible.
I don't want to under exaggerate that, because I was
putting handcuff and all the rest of it, and for
someone like me, mild managed, you know, professor of economics

(19:04):
from down the road and we'll quarry and to be
in you in handcuffs was terrifying and horrible. But I thought, no, no, no, look,
you know they're still going to release me after a
couple of days. Maximum.

Speaker 2 (19:17):
Sean, where was your wife at this point?

Speaker 3 (19:19):
So she's in Sydney, So i'd called her very very early.
In fact, actually I said I'd call the Australian bassador first.
I think I called how my wife first and told
her what was going to happen, and so she was
already on the task. She was calling all around, Department
of Foreign Affairs, She was on the phone to the
US Embassy, the UK embassy, everyone she could think of
at that point.

Speaker 2 (19:40):
And you were transported to the insane prison and held there.
What did the next couple of days look like, Because
at this point in time, you're thinking, surely I'm only
going to be held for a few days. Were you
given any information about the length of time, the severity,
or what was going on, or you kept completely in
the dark.

Speaker 3 (19:56):
Kept completely in the dark. And what made it particularly
frightening and sort of frustrating as well, is that even
on the ride out to insane I didn't know where
I was going, because there are two big things in
the northwest of Yangon. One is insane prison and the
other is the airport. So as we're going along, I'm
fearing that I'm heading towards the insane prison, but there's

(20:18):
a little part of my head saying, don't worry, They're
taking you to the airport and putting you on a plane.
So I knew absolutely nothing. I was then held in
isolation in this room that in the book I called
the box, and I was held there for two months,
no information at all, So it was a mix of
feeling just incredibly frightened and frustrated most of the time,
but also yeah, still hoping though that you know they're

(20:41):
gonna let me go.

Speaker 1 (20:42):
Can you talk to us about this box that you
spent eight weeks in? What did it look like? How
big was that? What was in there?

Speaker 3 (20:48):
So the best description I have on it is that
it's like one of those small shipping containers, those so
called twenty foot equivalent units I think they call them
so about that size, and like being locked in one
of those. In that there was no outlet to the
world outside except for a tiny slit window of glass
which was just for the police to be able to
look in. Other than that, absolutely nothing in it. Concrete floor,

(21:10):
these sort of fake wood paneling walls, and in the
middle of it, which was really scary. The first glance
was scary was a metal chair bolted down to the
concrete floor in the very middle of the room, and
to the chair were attached these lengths of chain with
handcuffs and ankle manacles to it, and that took up
most of the room. So, yes, I was just locked

(21:30):
in this box for them for two months, and I
would have to sort of sleep around the chair, and
the only exercise I could do was just walk backwards
and forwards in the box. And I kept on thinking,
you know, this is what animals do when they're locked up,
and it's sort of oddly comforting in a way. I mean,
this is the weird thing about it. You find that
there's a part of your brain that I think goes
into sort of ancient wisdom or you know, you don't

(21:52):
learn this stuff, but you just find that the best
way to deal with your fear and anxiety is just
a walk. So I would just pace up and down
the box all the time.

Speaker 2 (22:01):
How did you go to the bathroom? How did you
like sleep on concrete? Like the things that we take
for granted as every day like necessities.

Speaker 1 (22:10):
How did you have access to that? Yeah?

Speaker 3 (22:12):
I mean all that was awful. I mean the bathrooms.
I could have written another book about the bathrooms in
the prison. They were terrible. I mean, disgusting doesn't even
begin to describe it. They were those awful sort of
squat toilets and people will have encountered them, but just terrible.
While I was in the box, I used to have
to knock on the door and asked to be taken
to one of these and yeah, they you know, they

(22:34):
were just indescribable, frankly.

Speaker 1 (22:36):
And you didn't have a bed or blankets or pillow
like just so we can, because this is where my
brain's going, I'm trying to envision this box. What else
was in the room.

Speaker 3 (22:45):
So the embassy had been able to get me like
a little small almost like one of those camping mattresses
that are only sort of about, you know, a few
centimediatesly now that they were able to get me one
of those, and the guards would bring that in in
the evening and I just lay that on the floor.
But one of the those things was because I had
to lie virtually right up against the chair, my sleep
would always be disrupted because I'd brush against the chains

(23:08):
hanging off the chair, and that was horrible. They made
this horrible clanging sound. And it was the first time
of a thought that I would have throughout that I
felt like a convict in Australia, like these clanking chains.
All I could think of was, you know, early Australian
history and the penal colony in Port Arthur and all
that sort of stuff.

Speaker 2 (23:26):
It's remarkable how you speak about this experience and still joke.
I know from many conversations that we've had that laughter
is a coping mechanism for how we deal with immense trauma.
But what were you thinking in this time? How were
you dealing with the day to day when one day
rolls into another day. You have no idea how long
you've been in a box, how long you're going to
remain in there. How do you keep any sense of

(23:49):
positivity or any sense of feeling as though that you're
going to get out of this situation?

Speaker 3 (23:54):
So you know what the main thing was not thinking,
trying not to think. And I think this is where
the pacing comes in. Only pacing, but counting, counting the steps.
And I would sort of walk from one end of
the wall one wall to the other wall in the box,
touch the wall, and then do exactly the same again, backwards, forwards,
backwards forwards.

Speaker 1 (24:11):
What counting was it that?

Speaker 3 (24:13):
So it was eight steps, so I know it very
like I gattered them out all the time. So if
I did one two hundred and fifty crossings of the box,
I would have my ten thousand step daily healthy averreach.
So I concentrated on that and by simply just saying
the numbers as I walked and paced. It was sort
of I think it was my version of meditation. I

(24:34):
couldn't meditate. Most of my me and Mark colleagues, as
political prisoners, could do that, and that gave them immense comfort.
I'm too western, I think I'm too you know, my
mind is racing too much for that. So I found
just counting and pacing a way to keep thoughts at bay,
because in some ways you didn't really want to think
because there was nothing to think through. You know, this
was not logical. You couldn't think of a strategy because

(24:56):
everything was just so insane. As the name of the You.

Speaker 2 (25:01):
Also have no control, and it's this sense of how
do you think through a process when you have no
control over it? And maybe the walking and the counting
that was the smallest thing in your life at that
moment that you had control over.

Speaker 3 (25:12):
I think it's really insightful, exactly because counting allowed you
to measure and gives you control.

Speaker 2 (25:19):
Spoken like a true economisty, exactly if you can't count it,
it doesn't happen.

Speaker 1 (25:24):
Numbers are life. What about the lighting situation, because you
said there's only a tiny little couple of millimeter slit
of natural lights. So were you in the dark, did
you have lights? Did you what was that?

Speaker 3 (25:36):
So it was two extreme circumstances. So the lights were
meant to be on all the time, one hundred percent
of the time, and mostly they were. But because they
even by then the first few days the military had
been mishandling the economy, so blackouts were happening all the time.
So I was either in absolute denuged in like spotlights
in the box, or complete utter darkness so dark you

(25:59):
can't see your hand if you hold it in front
of your face. So it was always those two extremes.
And I'm not sure what was worse to be frank.

Speaker 2 (26:05):
How did you not go insane? I mean, I know
that we've talked about counting, but surely, I mean, I
just can't even comprehend how being in that space that
you'd be able to come out of it and still
have such a positive outlook on everything.

Speaker 3 (26:19):
So I think there was a couple of things. I
knew that people would be helping me from outside, led
by my wife, my daughter, my sister, my dad, you know,
then all my friends in the Australian government and all that,
So I knew it'd be causing a fuss, and so
I was thinking, Okay, now they'll all be there for me.
But I also drew upon my reading. I'm a voracious reader,
so I would try to remember things out of books,

(26:41):
and then I would get down into particulars. I tried
to remember every single US president in chronological order, all
fifty US states.

Speaker 1 (26:49):
But how do you confirm that you've got that right?

Speaker 2 (26:52):
You know?

Speaker 1 (26:52):
Like that would drive me insane. I'd be like, I
think I've got I think I nailed it, but you
can't confirm that.

Speaker 3 (26:57):
It was really hard, and I made mistakes. I remember
this is when I thought I'd nailed all the states.
I counted them up and I come to fifty one,
and I thought, wait, which one was like missing? And
then I found out relatively late in the piece. I thought,
wait a minute, Omaha is not a state as the city.

Speaker 1 (27:16):
You're making me laugh accounting this situation. And the thing is,
it's not a funny situation. But I think hats off
to you. On a more serious note, this torture chair
that was in the middle of this room. Was it
ever used on you? Were you ever made to sit
in it? Were you interrogated in that chair totally.

Speaker 3 (27:32):
Yeah, so I was put in the chair all the
time during interrogation. I wasn't chained up all the time.
Sometimes they would chain me up, other times they wouldn't.
Compared to my me and Mark colleagues, I was treated'd
be wrong to say relatively well, but you know, a
little more kind of a bat again as it mainly Yeah,
So my Burmese friends, for instance, they were electrocuted and everything,

(27:53):
you know, all the horrible things you can imagine of
modern torture was donder them from fingernail pulling out, you know,
the rest of it. But for me it wasn't quite
that bad. I was punched a few times, kicked a
few times. A guy sort of pretended to try and
set fire to my hair, which didn't work anyway. But yeah,
so and for me it was psychological torture I suppose

(28:14):
more than physical. But yeah, but it was just awful
being in that chair.

Speaker 1 (28:18):
Were you made to be able to hear your friends
being tortured as a form of torture?

Speaker 3 (28:23):
I think so. I'm not one hundred percent certain whether
it was deliberate, but I could hear prisoners being tortured
at night, which was a horrible sound. Horrible at so
many levels, because you know, you feel for the people
being tortured, but then you start to think selfishly, you know,
am I going to be next? Sort of thing? So
that was pretty awful. The only good thing about the
sounds at night was that I could also hear the

(28:44):
sounds of Yangon in revolt. And so I mentioned people
would bang pots and pans and all that, and so
I could hear that too. Yeah. So at one level
it told me that this regime was was evil and
you know, one level seemingly all powerful. But it also
told me that no, the people are not putting up
with it. Still, they're still resisting.

Speaker 1 (29:01):
I guess, before we move out of the box, what
was the food situation? Were you made to starve? Were
you given daily food? Did they treat you well? Was
it nutritious? I guess I think I know that answer.

Speaker 3 (29:13):
The food was awful. There were times where I went
without for fairly lengthy periods of time. Yeah, the food
was pretty awful. It used to arrive every day in
three buckets. One bucket was very badly cooked rice that
was either not cooked enough or cooked too much, and
it had lots of stones in it, which was terrible
for your teeth, and I broke my teeth a couple
of times with that. Then there was this sort of

(29:34):
very watery sort of bean soup was probably about the
healthiest thing. Then there was a meat dish of something
or other, but because it was a bucket, not a dish.
But by the time it got to the prisoners, all
the meat had been stripped away, so it was usually
just bone and fat and gristle and this oily residue
in the bucket. So the food was terrible and it
only later got better, not because the jail food got better,

(29:57):
but eventually the embassy was able to get food to
me and the food that my wife cooked here in
Sydney which was put in the diplomatic pouch and air
freight to me and Marle from camera. But yeah, no,
the food was as bad as anything else.

Speaker 2 (30:11):
That's so insane. What happened after these eight weeks of
being in the box. You said that your wife and
everyone around you in terms of family and support were
campaigning with in Australia. But what happened when you were
released from this? What was the next stage?

Speaker 3 (30:25):
Yeah, so after about eight weeks. There was a sudden
bustle and all these prison guards came in and told
me I was being taken deeper into the prison itself,
to the regular prison wards, so out of the box
and into that, and that was horrible. There were a
number of days that were the worst. It's hard to
nominate the specific one, but that one was a low
because this insane prison was built in the eighteen nineties.

(30:49):
It's like a giant wagon wheel from the air, so
it's a big circular sort of thing with a giant
tower in the middle which the prison guards then could
see every part of the prison. But it's very old,
very run down, and very very scary. So the guard
house looks like something out of Lord of the Rings,
like those sort of guard houses, and just frowns down
on people in front of it, you know, and just

(31:10):
symbolizes fear and cruelty and everything else. So it was
awful even just standing at those gates, great big wooden
door so big that it was one of those doors
that has another door inside it, a little small door
which I was taken through. But yeah, that moment, being
taken out of the box and then into the main
prison through this big guard house. Yeah, really horrible moment.

Speaker 2 (31:32):
Did you lose any hope at that moment? Because I
would assume that until this point you were thinking, if
I get out of this box, it would probably be
to be freed. But yet you were taken out of
the box and only pushed further inside a prison.

Speaker 3 (31:45):
That's right. It was a particular low point because also
at the same time I realized then that there was
a legal proceeding then underway. I mean, it's a joke
to call it illegal proceeding, but I knew that something
then was taking place. So yeah, it was the twin
effects of that sitting outside, standing outside this prison and
being forced into it, but then also that knowledge that okay,
this is actually going to take a while.

Speaker 1 (32:07):
So what were the main differences when you were moved
to the main prison. Were you in a cell that
you were sharing with people. Did you have more freedom
in terms of being able to go outside or walk
or exercise, eat more.

Speaker 3 (32:18):
So the major upside was then I could see people,
other political prisoners and other prisoners. Actually, more broadly, I
was always in the cell on my own. I think
the ME and R military didn't want me with Burmese
people because they worried I think the bad ideas might
come from me to them. So I was always in
a cell on my own the whole time, actually, but
I was in a cell with other cells next to me,

(32:40):
and so I saw many many Burmese people again, as
I mentioned earlier, young people who had come out on
the streets, and they were so good, so inspiring. They
saved my life and they looked after me. They were
just incredible. So just a couple of hours, a few
hours each day, we were allowed out of the cell
so I could see them, talk to them and all that.
So that was the one really possis.

Speaker 2 (33:00):
That you think, how did they save your life?

Speaker 3 (33:02):
All sorts of ways. I'm a you know, an aging
professor from Sydney. I've got no life skills at all. Zero.

Speaker 1 (33:11):
I think, now you have more life skills than many people.

Speaker 3 (33:14):
So they would help me with the food. So I
mentioned how bad the food was, that they used to
do incredible things with smuggled spices and things like that.
They'd turn those awful ingredients that I mentioned into something
actually eating. So yeah, even in that way, they got
to work. When they heard I was coming, they got
to work on the cell that they knew had been
allocated for me and cleaned it up and a little mad. Yeah. No,

(33:36):
they were just incredible. They would remonstrate with guards. If
guards were sort of acting roughly with me, they would
remonstrate with them and say, no, you cannot do that,
and things like that. So, yeah, incredible.

Speaker 2 (33:46):
At this point in time, considering you've been held in
the box for eight weeks, you've been moved into the
main prison, did you understand why you were being imprisoned? Like?
Had they told you what the charges were that had
been brought against you, as insane as they are.

Speaker 3 (33:59):
No, it took a lot long time for the formal
charges to be levied on me. But I knew where
they were going. I knew they were going to call
me a spy, and I was pretty sure they were
going to use this law called the Official Secrets Act.
So I was pretty sure that that's what it was,
because they'd sort of all been all hints to that end.
So yeah, so I knew roughly where it was going, which,

(34:19):
of course was itself a great cause of concern, because
being a spy has a penalty all the way up
to the death penalty, and so I thought, gosh, what
are they going to do? And of course you can't
trust them at all, as I found, they would just
make stuff up. They would make up documents, They would
put fake top secret stamps on documents that I had had,

(34:39):
and things like that to make it look as if
I'd been involved in SPONA.

Speaker 1 (34:43):
I mean, at the end of the day, they can
do whatever they want, can't they.

Speaker 3 (34:46):
That's right, and.

Speaker 1 (34:48):
You're a few months deep. Now, how'd you get any
contact with lawyers, any embassies, your wife, heart? Were you
actually able to communicate with anyone to get an understanding
of how they were going to help, what the process
was going to be like? Oh, you just left literally
in the dark.

Speaker 3 (35:03):
A few weeks after I arrived in the main prison,
proper I could be in contact with the embassy, but
again because of COVID, the military used as an excuse
to not allow any physical contact. In fact, I had
no physical contact with the embassy or anyone from outside
the prison all the way to the end. But A're
going to have phone meetings with the embassy about roughly

(35:24):
every couple of weeks, and the embassy very kindly actually
turned that over to my wife, who would have insisted
upon it anyway, I isn't a ad so I was
able to get in touch with her and my daughter Fuong,
and my dad and my sister and so on, and
so I was able to have a short conversation, so
every couple of weeks, about twenty minutes. So we had

(35:44):
to be really quick, and we had to sort of
make up a code on the run, because of course
we've not had time to do anything like that. So
I used to rely upon her. You know, I would
say something and it might be an allusion to a movie,
things like that, and I would try to get messages
through obliquely like that, which works most of the times,

(36:04):
but sometimes it didn't. Oh and sometimes you know, I
got it completely wrong and be misunderstood. And it was
around that time too that i'd first been introduced to
a lawyer. But there's not a lot of lawyers can
do in me in Marle, to be honest, because if
you've been charged with anything, you will be found guilty.
And in fact, lawyers, if they argue too strongly in
the court, they will be charged. So yeah, so I

(36:27):
knew one as soon as the charges will lay the
destination and the outcome was absolutely clear.

Speaker 2 (36:33):
When you mentioned that they were going to charge you
as being a spy. You also mentioned another legal term
that you thought that they were going to use against you.
What was that and can you describe a little bit
about what that term is?

Speaker 3 (36:43):
So it was the Official Secrets Act. So what they
did was there I was advising Ong Sang Suchi and
the government, and it meant, of course that I had
to write things, and I would, you know, help them
write speeches and help them in all sorts of economic documents.
But they used that as the basis of suggesting that
I had inappropriately taken this material and that I was

(37:04):
passing it along to the Americans, to the breeds of
the Australians and so on, and then that all of
this was just part of my espionage. But then there
was a little bizarre twist as well, because they also
charged me with breaking immigration law on the basis that
if I was a spy, then my little visa.

Speaker 1 (37:21):
Entry card you didn't declare the spy, what is your
occupation spy?

Speaker 2 (37:26):
So you'd misled what your occupation was within the country.

Speaker 3 (37:30):
Absolutely absolutely, So I ended up getting three years jail.

Speaker 1 (37:33):
For that, for not declaring, for not declaring that I
was a spy.

Speaker 2 (37:37):
So what ended up being the outcome in terms of
the amount of time that you spent in prison and
how it led up to your release. Can you talk
us through that part and kind of what was the
catalyst that allowed you to leave.

Speaker 3 (37:50):
So I ended up getting three years prison for the
breach of the Official Secrets Act and another three years
for the Immigration Act, but time would come off the
usual Secrets Act charge, so that meant effectively two years
that that had been served. But I still had at
least two years ahead of me in prison, and I'd
given up complete hope. Actually by then I was still

(38:11):
mentally okay, but the thought of getting out was pretty
much gone. So, you know, six hundred days odd in,
i'd been charged, convicted, you know, put back into the prison.
And we get to November sixteenth, twenty twenty two, and
it's my wedding anniversary, and it just so happens, by coincidence,
it's also one of my phone days with Heh and
I was talking to her and both of us had

(38:31):
reconciled to the fact that I was going to be
in the prison for months more and that i'd miss
another Christmas. And you know, I remember being quite despondent.
I normally got a great lift out of the phone
calls with her, but I remember on that one just
feeling really despondent. So I come back to the cell,
spend another night there, and then early the next morning,
i'd just been doing my pacing. I just finished the
ten thousand steps or near enough, when a prison guard

(38:54):
suddenly appeared and said, Sean, good news, you're going home.
And I was just so shocked, and I just said
to him, look, please, please please tell me you're not kidding.

Speaker 1 (39:04):
Please tell me who the fifty seventh second president was.

Speaker 3 (39:10):
Tried and by the way, But it was so shocking
that even though it was the moment that I'd hoped
for for all of that time, nearly two years, I
didn't know what to do. I thought. I remember just
sort of going to my bag and starting to pack something,
and then they said, look, you've only got ten minutes.
And then I remembered Hahrad told me John, don't bring
anything home. Above all, don't leave your clothes there and

(39:31):
all that, and so I suddenly remembered that, and I
just thought, okay, let's it, forget it, and just sort
of walked out with virtin nothing.

Speaker 2 (39:37):
Why did hahse don't bring anything home?

Speaker 3 (39:40):
Well, so such a bit of a thing actually, because
I'd spoken to my Burmese friends about it as well,
and I think this is right throughout Asia, the clothes
would be regarded as tainted in some way, like it's
almost like a little bit superstitious, but also practical as well,
because disease and all that goes around the prison really
really quickly, and these clothes were pretty dirt and terrible

(40:01):
by then, pretty raggedy. So yeah, there wasn't much point
bringing them home, although I did want to bring home
because the prison used to after you convicted, and you
become a convicted prisoner, you have to wear this blue
outfit which is like a bright blue shirt and a
blue longy which is sort of like a sarong that
men wearing Me and Ma, and I wanted to bring
that home, and I actually had stuffed it into a

(40:22):
bag as I'm leaving the cell, and the prison guard
set no, no, no, no prison property. So I quickly returned
because I don't want to theft charge on.

Speaker 1 (40:31):
Top, that's the last thing you want to get in
trouble for. But surely, I mean, you tell me surely
you didn't want to take a keepsake from such a
horrific time.

Speaker 3 (40:42):
No, But for some reason I did want this because
there was a very famous me and Mark prisoner who
always wore a blue shirt ever after. This is going
back decades, but for the rest of his life wore
this blue shirt in sort of honor, in honor of
his colleagues and so on. And I remember thinking, gee,
I want to grab that and so I can wear
from time to time. But yeah, probably best that I

(41:03):
didn't get it.

Speaker 2 (41:04):
What wasn't like in terms of being in prison? Because
when you're in such a complicated prison that has political
prisoners but also has people who are actual criminals and
you're all be meshed together. Is that a frightening place
to be when you're not sure who it is that
you can be around versus someone who's actually quite dangerous.

Speaker 3 (41:23):
In the abstract it is And as I think about
it now, it sounds terrifying because I was with literally,
I was with murderers, I was with narcotics traffickers and
someone and yeah, some of them, you know, were not
normally the people laying out with back here in Sydney.
But funnily enough, I got on really well with them all,
any particular the narcotics traffickers. There was a bunch of

(41:45):
them from Taiwan. And I remember, you know, this may
sound very naive in someone, but that these guys were
very young. They're in the early twenties. They seemed to
me incredibly naive. They reminded me. One in particular, reminded
me of my nephew, Timothy, in fact, to the extent
I actually called him Tim, and everyone else in the
prison called him Tim. But they're really nice, young guys.
I can only think of them as probably being you know, again,

(42:07):
this maybe I'm naive in this, but they seem to
me to be victims of things more than anything else.
So yeah, it was you know, I would never have
ever guessed that these were the people I would be
living with. But we got on well.

Speaker 1 (42:19):
And Jean, you're the only prisoner I've ever spoken to
in close confines? Is it like the movies? Because we're
all led to believe that inside of a prison you
pick your gang, that's your gang. There are constant gang wars, stabbings,
sexual assaults, beatings. Was it like that in the prison,
Like I know that you were safe? Quote unquote from that,

(42:40):
but was that actually happening.

Speaker 3 (42:42):
Not to my knowledge, and I think he The issue
is that most of the prisoners overwhelmingly so insane prison
At the peak of all of this, when I was there,
was probably got to about fifteen thousand prisoners in this jail,
and let's say thirteen thousand of them would have been political,
so they all looked out for each other, and they
were young and idealistic, some were students, etc. So there

(43:03):
wasn't that sort of hardcore element. So actually I saw
nothing like that. The only thing I thought that sort
of accorded with the cliche of prison was that people
liked to lift weights. So I remember thinking, Wow, this
is like every prison movie I've ever seen. But the
other stuff, yeah, I didn't see it, but I want
to be careful here, just to you know, it could
have been taking place and I just didn't see it.

(43:27):
But for the most part, people were very gentle and
compassionate with each other. There was an incredible sense of solidarity.
There was also a women's part of the prison as well,
and so I would see them all the time. Actually
when I was being moved around for the phone calls
and other things, and we'd all sort of, you know,
shout out to each other and give high fives and
stick three fingers up out of the Hunger Games thing,

(43:49):
which was the symbol for ye resistance against the military.
So the immense solidarity among some prisoners.

Speaker 2 (43:57):
What was it that changed because you were supposed to
spend this ex time and spend two more years in prison.
What was it that was the catalyst that got you free?

Speaker 3 (44:07):
So the trigger was a religious holiday, so in me
and while there's a bit of a tradition of having
amnesties on religious holidays and national events, so mine was
one of those. But it was a relatively obscure Buddhist
holiday which I didn't even know was about to take place.
So they used that as the reason to give me
an amnesty, and many other prisoners too. The real reason,

(44:28):
of course, wasn't that. It was the international pressure. So
the pressure had been piling on the regime, and in
this context, you know, the Australian government was great, the
US government was fantastic, Singapore and the Vietnamese government, whole
range of players all around the world just putting immense
pressure on the regime. So I think by then they
just thought just get him out. Just turn him loose.

Speaker 1 (44:49):
We've had enough.

Speaker 3 (44:50):
Yep.

Speaker 1 (44:51):
You just mentioned the women prison which were next door.
Had you had contact with Unsung su Chi at this
time and did you know her situation? Was she being
kept well, you said that the military want her gone.
Was there an aspect where you thought they're going to
kill her?

Speaker 3 (45:08):
Yeah? So the first six months I didn't see Suci,
but once a trial began because I was charged alongside her,
so basically I'm the spy and she's my agent. Was
the charge as well as other government ministers, so we're
all put on trial together. So I would see her
at the trial once a day for a week for
a full year, and we'd have a little bit of
time at the start of each trial day to have

(45:29):
a chat. And she was just fantastic. She was incredibly strong,
and in fact, that great spirit that had got her
through the nineties, the early two thousands and all that
was back. She was amazing. She was very concerned always
to keep my spirits up and everyone else's, but she
was also incredibly polite to the people who were mishandling,
the police, the prison guards and all the rest of it.

(45:50):
And she wasn't kept in very good conditions, and so
I worried because I think your question is a really
important one and a good one. I think they do
want to still be rid of her. I still think
they're not foolish enough to, you know, just outright murder her,
assassinate her. But through ill treatment you can more or
less amount to the same thing, because you know, she's
seventy seven now, she has a number of ailments, she

(46:12):
gets through them, and again you know she's very strong
and all the rest of it. But yeah, I worry
a lot about they are sort of planning her demise.

Speaker 2 (46:20):
It's so it's unbelievable to think what happens within other countries,
within other political systems, because you just expect that the
people who are governing are taking care, because that's what
we've been brought up and led to believe. And also
when there's not this airtime across these issues within Australia.
I know that we say like it was during a

(46:41):
time of COVID and that there were so many other
things to take front and center press within Australia, but
you do question, how can this go on and it
gets such little airtime within our mainstream media.

Speaker 1 (46:54):
Let's talk about your beautiful wife, ha who by all
accounts went above and beyond in the for your release.
What was she doing behind the scenes in that time
to help you get out?

Speaker 3 (47:05):
She was just a whirlwind of activity. So two categories
of activity. One is to support me, keep me alive.
So she's constantly baking. She's a great baker, so she
would bake stuff, seal it in one of those vacuum
seal bags, send it down to Canberra into the diplomatic
pouch over to Meamah. So she did all that and
anything that I wanted. And by that time too, I

(47:25):
was allowed to have books. So she kept up this
train of books running through which as much as the food,
really kept me alive. So she was doing that a
lot of the time. And then she's agitating though to
governments around the world, so she's writing letters, phone calls
to the Prime minister, to the Foreign minister, to the
Prime Minister of Vietnam, to the leader of Cambodia. She's

(47:46):
in touch with Prince Charles as he was. Then she's
in touch with leading American politicians just constantly twenty four
to seven, just pushing, pushing, pushing, and of course she's
still got a job to do as well, so she's
teaching a Macquarie Yuni while is is going on and
looking after our daughter Fuong, although Fuong really rose to
the occasion well and so she was looking after a

(48:07):
moment everyone else as well. But yeah, you know, just
an extraordinary amount of activity going on.

Speaker 2 (48:12):
Sean. You've written this book all around your experience. What
has been the reaction from the me and Mr Military
and from the government about you being so open and
talking about your experience, Well.

Speaker 3 (48:26):
They were extremely upset.

Speaker 1 (48:28):
I am not.

Speaker 3 (48:31):
The four things. Yeah, I don't know why they wouldn't
have expected me. But again, this sort of I think
illustrates their mindset right that they don't think about ordinary
citizens having a say, and so I think they were
genuinely taken aback when I got back to Australia and said, look,
conditions were awful, the situation was terrible. So they were
terribly upset and they ended up reversing my pardon. So

(48:52):
you know, so technically I'm a fellon at large.

Speaker 1 (48:54):
So you can't go back to the country because you'll
be arrested.

Speaker 3 (48:58):
Certainly couldn't go back to me and Mahle at all
can't even fly over it. I'm going to be very
careful about a whole range of things, you know, just
in case I would end up back there. Yeah, no,
I mean just extraordinary. And then when the you know,
the walkout and interviews like this, they can't be that extra.

Speaker 1 (49:11):
Are going to come from us?

Speaker 2 (49:12):
Now? Do they not frighten you?

Speaker 3 (49:14):
Though?

Speaker 2 (49:15):
Because I guess a country like this it revolves in compliance,
and I think for a long time there was this
expectation of compliance from its citizens and now people are
speaking out against but it does seem to be coming
to them as a shock. So do you not fear
what that could mean for you?

Speaker 3 (49:30):
Within Australia every so often, I think part of the
thing that protects me, I mean apart from just the
law and so on, and you know, the very obvious
demonstration of support from the Israel government and so on,
but also the Burmese community here in Australia who hate
the military, and I think would be you know, would
move with great alacrity if they thought that there was
any sort of move to army or anything like that.

(49:53):
So you know, I feel safe here, but it is
something to think about, I guess for all of us
as Australians, which outside of this, I've had many thoughts
since coming back to Australia, but above all, it's just
the idea that this country is a paradise. I know
we have our problems, but hah, and I spent the
weekend over it manly. Yesterday it was a beautiful day
and just you know, you wander around Sydney and it's

(50:17):
just so extraordinarily beautiful and the life. You know, again,
we know we have problems in inequalities and all the
rest of it, but life is was incredibly good. So
that's the sort of thing that you know, keeps you
on and even keel and keeps those darker thoughts at bay.

Speaker 1 (50:33):
And tell us how you wrote your book?

Speaker 3 (50:34):
So I wrote it quite quickly, So as an academic,
I'm usually I'm used to writing things, but you know,
it always takes ages and everything is footnoted and all
the rest of it. But this one was really quite quick.
One of the main reasons for was that probably about
half the book I memorized in the prison and I
would recite it to myself as I'm pacing up and down.
So again this is part of the way that I'm
coping and surviving in the prison, thinking about other things,

(50:56):
but including about the book. So in writing the book,
part of the process was just simply to take my
mind back to where I was in the prison and
just to remember and almost like like freedom of the
stream of consciousness writing where the pin almost did the
writing for me, and I was just a medium for that.

Speaker 1 (51:15):
It was literally written in your mind, that's it, and
you memorized it, thatgurgitated it. What was the first thing
you did when you got back, Like the first thing
you ate, the first thing that you had been thinking
about that whole time, Like when my feet get onto
Australian soil, this is what I'm going to do.

Speaker 3 (51:31):
So I had two things like that that I really wanted.
I wanted a glass of red wine and I wanted
some ice cream. So those two things were uppermost in
my mind. But returning to Australia was I mean, it
was great at so many levels, of course, but the
only flight they could get for me a defact, was
back to Melbourne. But they wanted to get me back
as quickly as possible. So even though I live in Sedire,

(51:53):
she said, Sean, look there's a seat left back to Melbourne.
We'll get you back there and then we'll take you
up to Sydney. So the great thing about it that
was the arrive in Melbourne, and that was great, and
hard had flown down to Melbourne to meet me and
all that. But within half an hour of arriving in
Melbourne we were then escorted to the Prime Minister's plane
and taken back up to Sydney. And so that was

(52:13):
incredible because here we are on this you know, this beautiful,
wonderful private jet, this falcon you know, business jet in
less than twenty four hours earlier, I'd still been in
my concrete cell in me and my unbelieved. So yeah,
within one day I go from this dank, dark dungeon
onto a private jet. It was just crazy, but.

Speaker 2 (52:34):
Even psychologically, like how do you reckon with that? And
it makes me ask, you know, you're so and I
know I said it earlier, like you're so positive in
how you talk about it. You seem to have compartmentalized
this truly traumatic period of life. What long term impacts
has this had on you?

Speaker 3 (52:50):
So I think all of that still to be revealed
in a sense. In fact, I think the phraser you
used is right. I think it's lifelong. The only negative
things I have is that I often dream about it.
I have a recurring dream that I'm still in the
prison and I can't get out. In fact, the particular
version of the dream is that I've got some sort
of form that authorizes my freedom and there's something wrong
with the form. It's not signed properly, there's a wrong

(53:12):
stamp on it or something like that. So I have that.
But other than that, yeah, I think compartmentalization is also important. Also,
some of my friends would often tell me, sure, you
know your positivity is just because you're not paying attention.
That might be part of it as well.

Speaker 2 (53:29):
Have you spoken to someone about your experience, like do
you go and see a therapist? Is something like that
provided for you? From a PTSD perspective, after you've been
through something so horrific I would expect that, almost like
the government, it would provide it for you.

Speaker 3 (53:44):
They did.

Speaker 1 (53:44):
So.

Speaker 3 (53:45):
I had four meetings with a psych.

Speaker 2 (53:47):
That's as many as you have off the back of
the Bachelor. So that seems like not enough.

Speaker 3 (53:51):
Indeed, so it was good. Actually it was quite good.
And she was very helpful of being able to identify
anxieties that I had, and where they came from and
all of that, so it was good. I haven't felt
the need to do that again. But having said that,
you do get flashbacks every now and then, and odd
little incidents will make you recall something in the prison,
so it'll suddenly come back to you. But yeah, for

(54:12):
the most part, I've been really busy just writing the
book and all of that, and just enjoying life as well.
So yeah, so so far I've managed to keep it
at bay. But you know, I do understand that there
will be times where it will come back totally.

Speaker 1 (54:24):
Sean. When you were in the depths of your despair
and your lowest point, no hope, no communication with the outside,
horrific living conditions, the thought of being tortured at your fingertips,
did you ever consider taking your life?

Speaker 3 (54:40):
I did. Yeah, So there were a couple of really
low points. I suppose that there was a time in
the box where I've been there probably about a month,
and so you're not in a good place psychologically anyway,
and there's still and there doesn't seem to be an end,
and I'm hearing the torturing and all that, and I
did think about that this is going to sound strange.
There were just practical considerations that made it not by

(55:00):
I remember thinking, Okay, how would I do this, because again,
you know, there were no feature of the box. It
was just concrete floor and all that. But there was
a light fitting at the top, and I remember thinking,
you know what, if I had a belt, I could
sort of hang myself off this light fitting. But because
I'm fairly sure so I'm only just over five four,
and this light was probably you know, a ten Footistically,

(55:21):
I can't get it. Logistically I wouldn't have even been
able to get to it anyway.

Speaker 1 (55:26):
Wow.

Speaker 3 (55:27):
And then there was a sort of again odd macabre
little moment just on the same level, when one of
the prison guards took the belt away. After a long time,
they finally took the belt away, and it was actually
the superintendent of the prison and he said, oh, sure,
better take this from me because you might hang yourself.
And that was sort of, you know, just a weird moment.

Speaker 1 (55:45):
Do you think there's a part that they like, there's
part of them that leaves things like belts, like you
obviously were left with a belt for a while. Do
you think they leave them with you with the intention
that maybe you will do it like no skin off
their back if you do.

Speaker 3 (55:59):
I'm not sure. It's an interesting one, that one, because
I was treated incredibly badly the whole time, But they
were also very anxious that I didn't die on them,
because I think they would be worried about if I
died save natural causes all COVID. So I got COVID
five times and so, and the conditions were just awful.
And you know, again at that point, I was fifty seven,

(56:19):
fifty eight guys my age dropped out of heart attacks
all the time, I mean, and this sort of stressful,
incredibly unhealthy environment. So I worried about dying in the prison,
and I think they worried about me dying as well,
and that they get to blame. So, but it was
a bit of a mix in a way, right, So
because they're, yeah, they're certainly not treating me well, and
they're setting up all the circumstances that that could easily

(56:41):
allow you to get illnesses, of accidents, all that sort
of stuff. But simultaneous, I think the politics of that
would have been quite bad. So in the middle of
all this bad food, this ill treatment, all the rest
of it, they would often come around and take my pulse.

Speaker 1 (56:53):
Like moments of caring.

Speaker 3 (56:55):
Yeah, moments of seeming care. But again I don't want
to give them too much credit because I think it
was really just.

Speaker 1 (57:01):
No, it's only just to keep you alive, Yeah, to
keep you in heinous conditions, that's right.

Speaker 3 (57:05):
Yeah, yeah, and just to make sure Yeah, I didn't
just drop dead on them.

Speaker 2 (57:09):
But also those moments of seeming compassion can be even
more psychologically traumatic because it makes you empathize with the
people who are doing these things to you, and you
start to humanize them as well. It's such an unfair
I don't know want we use for a better word,
but like a complete headfuck that you have to try
and navigate around this where you're like, this is how
I'm being treated, But also I guess they need to

(57:31):
keep me alive, so there's some sort of level of care.

Speaker 3 (57:33):
You're absolutely right, and we'd dynamics, emotional weird dynamics. And
one of the things I had to guard against was
being too thankful for gestures or total concessions that were
just what a human being should expect from another human being,
but you would be very grateful to it. And yeah,
I had to consciously not to become too emotionally dependent

(57:55):
on particular individuals or try to please. I think my
nature is often to try and do that conflict than
blah blah blah, So I would actually actively have to
avoid doing that.

Speaker 1 (58:04):
But it's all relative, right, Like you're being grateful because
something is given to you in a place and under
conditions where it is not the every day and it's
not a given and you don't have those luxuries. So
of course you're going to feel more grateful when you're
given an extra scoop of beings or an extra scoop
of rights, even though of course it's basic human rights.
It's you adapt it's adaptations, it's a necessity to survival.

(58:26):
Exactly before we wrap up, do you have any communication
or are you following along with your friends that you're
left behind in the prison, these people that saved your
life in the prison, because I imagine, I imagine I would
grapple with that leaving behind when you're in a situation
and you know how horrific it is, and you know
these people have helped you, and you know that they

(58:46):
are never going to have an out, do you remove
yourself from that situation to save your own sanity, or
do you want to stay connected because you feel like
you owe them.

Speaker 3 (58:56):
Something very much the latter so, and this is probably
the area of greatest distress in two ways. One is
I worry for them. They're incredibly vulnerable. I worry that
they could be harmed by things that I do, because
the regime again is not backward in sort of threatening.
But what is so frustrating is that I can't even
reach out to them. I can't contact them. I have

(59:18):
so many friends who I haven't seen now for about
three years, people who i'd work with and all that,
and I can't even click like on Facebook, like so
I follow everyone. I try, and you know, do what
I can to keep people safe and help people who
I know, you know in a situation that could use
my help. But for people inside, I try to observe

(59:38):
what's going on, but I have to be so careful
and I don't contact them. I don't do anything.

Speaker 2 (59:44):
Because they could toure them in dager of that.

Speaker 1 (59:46):
And I think I read one of your friends was
murdered not long after you left.

Speaker 3 (59:52):
That's right. So probably the single most distressing moment was
a guy called Kin Moong Shui but it used to
be known to me as Jacob. He looked after me
a lot, but he was a very high spirited, wonderful
man who just didn't put up with anything. So I mentioned,
you know how other prisoners would stick up for me,
but above all was Kim Mong Shwui, and the prison

(01:00:13):
guards hated him for that. They also feared him, and
so they concocted a situation. This is about a month
after I'd left the prison where a fight had developed
in the prison and he'd gone there to break them up,
and that was very him, that was very characteristic, and
these two guys it was a fake fight. They then
turned on him started beating him, and then other prison
guards arrived and started beating him and kicked him to death.

(01:00:35):
So he lingered on overnight and then died the next day.
So obviously, you know, partly writing the book was to
honor people like him, but sort of shows you the
extent to which they'll go.

Speaker 2 (01:00:45):
So sorry, So it must be it must be incredibly
difficult to see this from the sidelines now and not
be able to do anything to help.

Speaker 1 (01:00:51):
I'm so sorry for you lost, or incredibly difficult as
well to have this internal monologue that you don't want
to be an internal monologue. You want to put it
out to the world because you want to. No, it's
an internal battle, I guess you want to. You want
the world to know what is happening in hopes that
there will be some change implemented. But having said that,
the effects of having the world know could directly affect
your friends that you've left in the prison. So it's like,

(01:01:14):
what is the better of two evils?

Speaker 3 (01:01:15):
Yep, Absolutely, I have an amentous responsibility to tell their story,
to tell the truth. But what do you do in
a situation we're in doing that that may endanger of
the people. So one of the things I was very
clear about in the prison with my other political prisoners
was that I told them I was going to write
a book and I would tell the story. And I said, look,
I need your permission to do that. And to a person,

(01:01:37):
and again this goes to their courage and all that.
To a person, they said, you must tell the story, Sean,
we don't care if this blows back on us. That
the bigger issue is to get the story out.

Speaker 2 (01:01:48):
So wow, yeah, what is happening now in myma?

Speaker 3 (01:01:51):
So the military just go on they're getting more and
more desperate. So the opposition, that the Democratic opposition is
starting to win military battles now, so it's not even
just simply protesting and all of that. So the military
don't even have complete control over the country now. In fact,
there may be up to about forty percent of the
country not under the military control. Just last week there
were some big defeats of the military there. Some of

(01:02:12):
their friends like China seemed to be giving up on
them on the military. Yeah, so the junta is on
the back foot, but unfortunately that just means that they're
extra savage, you know, yeah, more aggressive, more killings. They're
using aeroplanes, etc. To bomb villages, displace people's camps and
all sorts of things. So, yeah, a really desperate time
at the moment.

Speaker 2 (01:02:33):
What can be done in terms of I mean, we hear,
like we said earlier, there's so many conversations around war
and around how people can help, but what can people
do in this instance?

Speaker 3 (01:02:44):
So I think the major thing that countries like Australia
can do and people can therefore help at getting out
policy makers to do, is to restrict the junta's resources.
Australia hasn't yet imposed financial sanctions on memo to the
extent that America has done and Britain has done in
countries like that. I'd like to see us do that
because I think the ME and Mar's military is absolutely
desperate for foreign exchange to buy military equipment essentially, so

(01:03:08):
I think cutting that off is one sort of practical
thing we can do. I don't exaggerate how much we
can do, you know, there's not a lot, to be honest,
but I think that would be important. And likewise, I
think then just supporting the Burmese people who have either
fled the country but people inside as well, So that's
sort of humanitarian assistance channeled through the movement of people
who force to fully and so on, plus that sort

(01:03:30):
of financial sanctioning. I think those are two sort of
practical ways in which we could support people and burmer Sean.

Speaker 1 (01:03:37):
Your story is truly fascinating and we can't think you
enough for coming and sharing your story today because it
is it must be really really hard for you to do.
For reasons we discussed your book, An Unlikely Prisoner has
just been released, so congratulations on that, and if anybody
wants to find out more about Sean's incredible story. Please
go and get that book anywhere you can, literally anywhere
you can buy a book. And you're doing a lot

(01:03:57):
of interviews at the moment you're on the ABC. You're
really putting yourself out there in hopes of some change,
and I know that that change is very optimistic, but
you're doing it nonetheless. So thank you so much for
your time today.

Speaker 3 (01:04:09):
Thank you. It's been a real place of b