MEMOIR
An Unlikely Prisoner
Sean Turnell
Viking, $35
If Sean Turnell was an unlikely prisoner, his memoir of 650 days held captive in squalor by the brutes who have inflicted carnage on Myanmar is even more surprising. It’s funny.
Sean Turnell with Aung San Suu Kyi.Credit:
An Unlikely Prisoner is not a comedy. Far from it. But Turnell has teased out wry and darkly humorous moments from a bleak situation, and with his humour helps dissect and make digestible the junta’s horrors.
Aung San Suu Kyi’s favourite economist, Turnell was in COVID quarantine in a Yangon hotel when the armed forces seized power in February 2021. Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy was due to start its second term after another electoral landslide, but Senior General Min Aung Hlaing had other ideas and rounded up the leadership before unleashing a reign of terror that led to civil war. As an adviser to Suu Kyi’s government, Turnell was in the goons’ sights in the early days after the coup.
He charts the journey from his arrest at the hotel, through the accusations of espionage, his months in isolation, remand in the notorious Insein prison, a sham trial in the capital Naypyidaw, and swift return to Sydney after a surprise amnesty.
“I was not quite the cliche of the bumbling academic,” he writes, admitting, “but I fancy I wasn’t far from it.” No Jason Bourne, he would joke with wife and fellow economics lecturer Dr Ha Vu that rather than being The Asset, he was The Liability.
Sean Turnell’s memoir An Unlikely Prisoner.Credit:
The absurdity of the case against him becomes clear when he is accused of illegally possessing a classified memo – of which he was the author. Pointing out this fact early is of no help: his own document is entered into evidence against him at trial, along with others that had been clearly and clumsily tampered with while he was incarcerated.
The memo in question concerned punishments the government might mete out towards those involved in the genocide against the Rohingya minority of north-west Myanmar. Suu Kyi and her government were criticised for failing to condemn the atrocities, and top generals involved benefited from the coup.
Suu Kyi, 78 and at last count facing a further 25 years in prison, makes an appearance as a co-defendant. Turnell describes her as thin from her prison time, and unfailingly courteous in the face of the “pumped-up, pompous judges. Her compassion, wisdom, and sheer moral authority reasserted itself in the most trying and character-testing of circumstances.” They would eschew discussions of the sham legal process in favour of her pride in the resistance to the coup, world affairs and whatever books he could smuggle to her.
Turnell’s writing is economical. He doesn’t spare the reader from murder, torture, rats and mosquitoes, but never wallows in misery. When he rages, it is against the junta’s outrages; when he feels hopeless, it is hard not to sympathise. He needs only invoke Orwell two or three times to get the point across: Min Aung Hlaing has rebuilt a totalitarian nightmare on lies and fear.
He was sentenced to three years in jail, but released on a national holiday and whisked back to Sydney. Given the sudden denouement, it isn’t quite told as a gripping spy thriller, but it zips along.
Ha Vu, Sean Turnell and Anthony Albanese in parliament. Turnell writes warmly of those involved in his return to Australia.Credit: Alex Ellinghausen
Above all, it was Ha in Sydney who was his greatest supporter and source of strength. He writes warmly of the network of friends, diplomats, academics, activists and politicians involved in his case. Many in Myanmar go unnamed to ensure their safety. While Turnell is no doubt genuine in his gratitude, the praise verges on the gushing. Here, again, the humour helps: feted in federal parliament, he describes himself as looking “like a butler being praised for my shoe-shining prowess”.
No one can begrudge Turnell a happy ending. The tragedy is, for Myanmar the end is nowhere in sight.
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