SAI WANSAI is the nom de guerre of Sai Myo Win born in 1950, in Myanmar’s Shan State. Belonging to the Shan people, a Tai ethnic group of Southeast Asia, he has been a lifelong activist in the Shan political scene from childhood to the present day.
As a schoolboy, he was an active member of the Tai Youth Association and later at Mandalay University became keenly interested in Shan literature and culture. After leaving university, he joined the armed struggle with the Shan resistance movement, before going into exile in Thailand. Following five years in exile, he immigrated to Germany where he was eventually naturalised as a German citizen.
During his political career, he has been secretary of the Shan Literature and Cultural Committee at Mandalay University; general-secretary of the exiled Shan Democratic Union (SDU); has worked as an international emissary for the Shan Nationalities League for Democracy (SNLD) party, which won the majority vote in Shan State during the 1990 elections – before the result was annulled by the military regime – and has served as a representative of the Shan people at the Unrepresented Nations and Peoples Organisation (UNPO), The Hague, Netherlands.
He is married with two daughters, and currently lives with his family not far from the city of Hamburg in Germany.