‘OUR INTENTIONS WERE NOBLE’
PLANE HIJACKER PLEADS HIS CASE TO STAY IN CANADA
In 1989, when he was a 19-year-old student activist in troubled Myanmar, Than Soe hijacked a passenger plane by claiming a box of laundry detergent was a bomb. He told the pilot to divert to Thailand and, when they landed, used the commotion to highlight human rights abuses in his homeland.
At 48, Soe, who now lives in Canada, remains in the shadow of that defining moment when he and a friend rose from their seats 10 minutes after takeoff and announced they had a bomb.
“We used a laundry detergent box with a wire attached to make it look like a bomb,” Soe recounted. “We did not bring any (real) weapons because we had absolutely no intention of harming anyone.” Their only goal was to get the world to pay attention to Myanmar’s repression, he said.
Since arriving in Canada in 2003 and claiming political asylum he has had a different struggle — convincing the Canadian government he is not dangerous.
“In the eyes of the authorities, I am not a pro-democracy exile but simply just a former hijacker or a terrorist,” Soe told the National Post.
From his time as a student protester in a repressive regime to hiding in the jungle, from his hijacking plot through prison in Thailand, university scholarships in the United States and resettlement in Canada, Soe has led an extraordinary but disjointed life.
He now wants a peaceful life in Canada.
Soe was a gifted child. At the age of 16, in what was then called Burma, he was selected to pursue engineering studies in Rangoon. He planned to follow in his father’s footsteps in telecommunications.
At school, he developed pro-democracy and humanitarian values. He saw the abuses of the military government and attended student protests, which began on Aug. 8, 1988, and became known as the 8888 Uprising.
The protests were met with increasing violence. Soe said he saw the army open fire on student demonstrators. It is estimated thousands died in crackdowns.
“Our country was closed to the outside world. Terrible things were being done to our people by the government in power,” Soe recounts in court documents.
He fled the capital and agreed to meet fellow student activists in the jungle near the Burma-Thai border. It took him three weeks to get to the rendezvous. No one else arrived.
Instead, he met dissident groups taking refuge on the Thai side of the border.
“Life in the jungle was difficult, brutal and dangerous,” he said. He caught malaria and found it hard to get information. The military was paying informants to report on activists and suspicion was rampant.
Soe said he became enamoured of Aung San Suu Kyi, leader of the National League for Democracy, who advocated for free elections. The military government arrested her in the summer of 1989 as her influence grew.
In the weeks after her arrest, Soe and two fellow activists started looking for ways to bring the world’s attention to their plight.
“I became desperate and came up with a plan that was dramatic, yet without harming anyone. I rejected violence,” Soe said.
They settled on hijacking a plane and forcing it to fly somewhere the government couldn’t control their message. One friend backed out. The other two returned to Burma and worked to get tickets on a state-owned Burma Airways jet.
Two “mysterious men” sold them two seats aboard a flight scheduled to leave Mergui, in the far south, to Rangoon, he said.
On Oct. 6, 1989, Soe and his friend boarded the plane, along with 79 passengers and four crew.
They had two laundry detergent boxes, one still filled with soap and the other with fertilizer. After the plane took off, the pair declared they had a bomb and held up one of the boxes. Soe headed to the cockpit while his friend talked to the passengers.
“I approached the pilot and told him we were students and that we wanted the plane diverted to Bangkok,” Soe said.
To calm frightened passengers, Soe said, he told them they only wanted to make a political statement and had no intention of hurting them.
He read them their threepage statement and seven demands — which they had handwritten in English and stamped with their thumbprints in blood.
The demands included the release of Suu Kyi and all political prisoners, an end to the civil war against ethnic groups and guarantees for freedom of expression.
Instead of flying to Bangkok, the pilot landed at a Thai military airbase. Using the pilot as a translator, Soe relayed their demands to a Thai negotiator named Tienchai Sirisampan, who was deputy prime minister.
Sirisampan and Soe spoke over eight hours as he and his accomplice began releasing passengers. At about 2:30 a.m., the general stepped on board. He gave them two Thai newspapers that had written about the hijacking on the front page. They then surrendered.
Soe was convicted in Thailand in 1990 and sentenced to six years in prison, but was pardoned and released after 2½ years.
A letter from Sirisampan was entered in court on Soe’s behalf, saying: “I do not believe he had any intentions of harming anyone on that plane. I believe the students were just inexperienced boys who wanted to make a political statement and were neither dangerous nor threatening.”
Soe remained in Thailand until 1996, when he won a scholarship to a U.S. university. He obtained an economics degree and started an engineering degree in 2001, when U.S. immigration officials arrested him.
He blames it on a crackdown after 9/11. He was released when a U.S. judge accepted he was not a threat and he would be persecuted if returned home.
Fearing his life might be difficult, Soe came to Canada, crossing illegally before applying for asylum as a refugee in Kitchener, Ont., in 2003.
Canada’s Immigration and Refugee Board found Soe inadmissible for engaging in an act of terrorism. Appeals to the Federal Court and re-hearings and new appeals followed.
Last year, Ralph Goodale, minister of public safety, denied Soe’s request, citing him as a security threat, just as Stockwell Day, a Conservative public safety minister, did in 2006.
Soe appealed to the Federal Court.
Justice James Russell rejected Goodale’s logic as “unintelligible and unreasonable” in a recent ruling.
“This matter has been proceeding since 2004 and I can find no evidence in the record to suggest that the applicant poses any kind of risk or threat to national security or public safety,” Russell wrote.
The court sent the case back for redetermination.
Meanwhile, Soe has worked as a technician at a large Canadian company for several years and has no criminal record in Canada.
In emails with the Post, Soe said he does not seek publicity on his own case but hopes the world continues to monitor abuses in his homeland, a reference to atrocities against the Rohingya, which have been called genocide.
Soe hopes he will emerge from the shadow of the hijacking. He said he regrets it.
“I am a peace-loving person,” Soe said in court filings. “I lived under a regime that was barbaric. They were exterminating ethnic groups. They were murdering those who opposed them. I had to act.
“I recognize the danger of our actions,” he said. “Even though our intentions were noble, the means we chose were wrong.”