The last week of August 2002 was an unusually rainy week. Even after 20 years, I remember that because I spent that week in what was the most hostile, violent and stressful place in my life. Up to now, I can revisit the fear I felt— fear of losing a future, of never seeing my beloved ones again. Photo: Burma Campaign UK I was a third-year engineering student at that time. The final exam was drawing near, and that one evening of late August, I was studying while Mom and others were busy preparing for her 50th birthday treat the next morning. At about 11 pm, three men in plainclothes came, searched my study room, and took me away. “National Bureau of Intelligence,” they said to my family, without giving their names and ranks or showing their IDs. “We have a few questions for him.” “We’ll send him back soon,” they told my family, “Do not make any complaint to any entity.” But I understood that in Burma, also known as Myanmar, a country under military rule for decades, a person taken aw