the personal relationship. and by the way, it wasn t manipulation, it was genuine. it has to be genuine. and they ended up in a conversation that instead of five minutes, took 45 minutes, about leadership, about how it impacted the families. they bonded, and that was one of the things that we do very, um. we focus on in our work, to the extent that then the governor told him, look, general, i m going to get criticised for being here, for seeing you, for what they say is legitimising you. but i don t care. i m a politician. i have thick skin. let them criticise me. i m here because i love the people of myanmar, and i want to help the people of myanmar. but if you want to help me with those critics, there is this young guy here, danny fenster. if you let me go, it will shut our critics up. and the leader looked at him and he said, and this is, by the way, the governor telling me outside of the meeting, the leader looked at him and said,
as you mentioned, there are eight of them. right. now, we re talking about gaza, which, of course, has all happened since you wrote a book called in the shadows about the work that you do and the fact. and it s the reason the family called you. because of your involvement in cases like the release of the us basketball star brittney griner in russia, otto warmbier, the us student jailed in north korea, xiyue wang, the princeton graduate student in iran, and many others. but also danny fenster, who was a journalist arrested by the myanmarjunta in 2021. can we focus on what happened with him? because this is something that you were obviously deeply involved with, and you secured his release. it s something that at times the us government has recognised as well. how did that come about? yeah, so we have two different ways in which we actually
are able to bring people home. in the case of danny fenster, we were actually able to conclude a deal ourselves and actually physically bring him home. in most of the cases, just like it is in gaza, and with brittney griner, we step in and we re able to conduct conversations and refine and define what the deal would be, and they ll need to sell it to our own government in order to execute. but back to danny fenster. he was taken. he s a journalist. he was taken out of the airport, as he was leaving myanmar legally, by the military government. once they knew that there was an american in the system, things kind of escalated because the us and myanmar, and the military government in myanmar after the takeover in 2021, they were not talking to each other. so if you don t talk, how are you going to figure out how to release your own citizen? so we started working really hard on trying to penetrate, to get a visit in there. our relationship with myanmar go back about ten years before that,
is this a big story, danny fenster? and the governor said, look, if you let him go for us, it will be a big story, but i don t want you to do it for that. i want you to do it for me, as my friend. and that was at the point when the leader looked at him and said, i will give you danny fenster. i will give him to you. i will do it here, but it will take me about a week or two. will you come and visit me again? to which the governor, of course, said yes. and he said, you cannot let anybody know about this. so, sarah, we flew back from myanmar on a very long flight, not able to tell the family, not able to tell our own government that we have secured his release. and meanwhile, the reason why the leader needed that time is because he needed to conclude his trial, which he did, and sentenced him for 11 years. so you can imagine the heat that we got. not only did we go to myanmar, didn t get him, but he got maximum sentencing and we had to stomach it for about a week until the phone
Myanmar Junta Re-Arrests More Than 100 Released In Amnesty: Report : Rashtra News Myanmar has been rocked by massive protests since the February coup in the country. (File)Bangkok: Myanmar's junta has re-arrested more than 100 anti-coup protesters freed in a recent amnesty, according to a local monitoring group that tracks detentions and killings in the