My friend Guy Horton, who has died aged 73, was a human rights defender, journalist and educator who spent much of his life dedicated to helping others, whether on the frontline of conflict, or mentoring young people such as myself.
From 1998 to 2005, while working for the Brussels-based Euro-Burma Office (EBO), among others, Guy uncovered widespread human rights violations in eastern Myanmar against the Karen and Shan ethnic groups, following a 50-year war between the Burmese government and indigenous peoples. His 2005 report, Dying Alive, and supporting video footage was submitted to the UN security council in 2007. The UN committee on the prevention of genocide later carried out an investigation and placed Myanmar on the genocide watchlist.
Born in Greenwich, south-east London, Guy was the son of William, an asset manager, and Christiana (nee Griffiths). He grew up in Nainital, India, where his father was working for ICI, until the age of seven when he was sent to school in Sussex, where his grandparents lived. He then boarded at Worth secondary school and studied English at Trinity Hall, Cambridge, graduating with a BA, then a master’s in 1975.
Guy then taught English at Woolwich College, south-east London, Evesham College, Warwickshire, and the Open University, before moving in the 1990s to Oxford, where he studied psychotherapy and worked as a therapist for the local health authority.
Deeply moved by the humanitarian catastrophe in Myanmar, in the mid-90s he proposed that the city of Oxford grant honorary citizenship to Aung San Suu Kyi – then a detained human rights activist and later a politician, whose reputation latterly became tarnished by what Guy called her “complicity with tyranny”.
Aung San Suu Kyi’s husband, Michael Aris, got in touch to thank him and, discovering they had been at school together, they became close friends. Michael suggested Guy visit Myanmar, and in 1998, Guy travelled there to monitor the increasing volatility for EBO. While in Manerplaw, a border area under the control of insurgents, Guy’s life was saved from the approaching Burmese military by locals who put him on an ageing ex-war elephant that pushed through overgrown jungle paths and across the landmine-strewn border to Thailand.
From 2002, Guy taught English and human rights to refugees in Thailand, funded by the Open Society and the Netherlands government, lectured at Soas University, London, and did freelance journalism. In 2017 he settled in Rottingdean, East Sussex, where he gave adult education classes in human rights at a local community centre, and wrote short stories and poems. Parkinson’s disease eventually prevented him from returning to Myanmar and Thailand, much to his frustration.
I met him around this time as an aspiring journalist, and he showed unwavering support in me and my career. Those who knew Guy cherished his warmth, compassion and interest in making the world a better place.
He is survived by his brother, Robin.
