 Following the 8888 Uprising in 1988, Tin Oo sought out Win Htein and asked him to join the National League for Democracy, where he was assigned to the personal staff of Aung San Suu Kyi.Along with dozens of other NLD members, he was arrested in July 1989, subjected to physical torture during interrogations and held in solitary confinement at Yangon's notorious Insein Prison.Released in 1995 under a general amnesty for political prisoners, he was arrested again the following year and charged with "instructing" Maung Tin Hlaing, a bodyguard of Aung San Suu Kyi, to speak about the torture of political prisoners in Myanmar's jails during an interview with the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, and organising farmers to collect agricultural statistics.