Htay Kywe was held in Buthidaung Prison, in Arakan State over 700 miles from Rangoon. It cost his relatives almost 800 US dollars each time they travelled to Buthidaung, and when they got there they were only allowed twenty-five minutes with Htay Kywe, with guards standing right beside them. The prison had no electricity, and no doctor. Food parcels sent by the family took five days to reach him, but the postal authorities opened the parcels to check them and didn’t put the contents back properly – so the food went bad. He had previously spent twelve years in prison. ‘His belief is very strong, his commitment is very strong,’ a family member told me at the time. ‘But there is a chance he may die in prison.’ Thankfully, he too was released in 2012 and when I met him his resilience and renewed commitment inspired me greatly.
Many political prisoners have died in prison. The Assistance Association for Political Prisoners (AAPP), in its report ‘Burma’s Prisons and Labour Camps: Silent Killing Fields’, claimed that at least 139 democracy activists have died in detention, ‘as a direct result of severe torture, denial of medical treatment, and inadequate medical care’.17 In May 2005, for example, Aung Hlaing Win died six days after being arrested. ‘According to the autopsy, confirmed by four medical specialists from North Okkalapa Hospital, thirty-year-old Aung Hlaing Win died before he got to the hospital and was sent to the hospital as a corpse,’ the AAPP’s report ‘Eight Seconds of Silence: The Death of Democracy Activists Behind Bars’ claims. Doctors found twenty-four external wounds, three fractured ribs and a fourth rib ‘broken in two causing bruising to his heart’. Bruising was also found around his throat and trachea, and his stomach and colon were ‘decaying’. He was diagnosed as having died of a heart attack.18
The denial of medical treatment for sick prisoners is perhaps one of the harshest policies of the regime. In October 2006, Thet Win Aung died in prison after contracting cerebral malaria at Kham Ti Prison in Sagaing Division. He received no treatment before his death.19 On 23 December 2009 thirty-eight-year-old Tin Tin Htwe Ma Pae died in Insein Prison, after a ruptured aneurysm.20 In December 2009 it was reported that the Buddhist monk U Gambira, a leader of the Saffron Revolution and founding member of the All Burma Monks Alliance, was suffering malaria. He was held in Kale Prison, Sagaing Division, over 1,000 miles from Rangoon,21 serving a sixty-eight-year sentence. After one three-day journey to visit him when he was held in Hkamti Prison, before he was moved to the even more remote location of Kale, his mother said: ‘The trip from Mandalay to [Hkamti] prison was like being sent to hell alive. My life, and my family’s life, is just like clockwork now. We eat and sleep like robots. There is no life in our bodies. The ordeal we are going through – it’s a punishment for our entire family.’22 U Gambira was released in January 2012, but just a few weeks after he was freed, he faced fresh charges of breaking and entering a monastery that had been sealed by the authorities. He was briefly detained in February 2012, and then released again with further legal action pending. His case shows how fragile Thein Sein’s ‘reform process’ is.
On 2 May 2008 Cyclone Nargis hit Burma – the worst natural disaster in the country’s recent history. The storm ripped off the roofs of some of the cells at Insein Prison, leaving prisoners exposed to heavy rains and wind for several hours. They protested, urging the prison guards to move them to another cell, and they threatened to break out if they were not relocated. Armed guards fired shots into the air to calm the prisoners’ disturbance, but a bullet hit one prisoner, Thein San, according to witnesses. The guards then beat the prisoners severely, and denied them water for four days and food for eleven days. ‘They told us they would give us food if we confessed,’ one prisoner told Radio Free Asia. ‘But even after some confessed, we didn’t get any food. Then, eleven days later, we began to receive a spoonful of rice puree twice a day.’ Nine prisoners died as a result of this mistreatment.23
These accounts are confirmed by Radio Free Asia, which the UNHCR has also cited. Radio Free Asia reported in March 2009 that: ‘Burma’s political prisoners – many of them serving lengthy jail terms for their part in the 1988 pro-democracy movement – face harsh conditions in remote prisons where family visits are limited and food supply strictly controlled by the authorities.’24 Sometimes food parcels brought by relatives are refused, depending on the whim of the prison governor.
Most barbaric, almost medieval, of all are the forms of torture inflicted on prisoners. ‘I was sentenced to three years hard labour. I was interrogated and tortured for thirty-six hours,’ Bo Kyi, founder of AAPP told Phil Thornton.25 ‘I was given no food or water, and was kept handcuffed and blindfolded. I was put in a small cell. I could see blood and many names, including those of my friends, on the walls. I was not allowed to shower for nine days.’ His cell was just three by three metres, with ‘blood spattered on the walls’ and he was subjected to regular beatings. ‘I was blindfolded and repeatedly interrogated. After each answer I gave, I was punched in the stomach so hard it knocked me to the ground. Every time I was forced to stand up and take it, over and over again. I lost all track of time.’26 On other occasions he was whipped with a rubber cord about an inch in diameter. ‘After being hit 150 times, I lost consciousness. When I woke up, I was taken in chains to a solitary confinement cell. I was then forced to assume various ponsan positions for one hour at a time, twice a day,’ he recalls. Ponsan is the term referring to a position sitting absolutely vertical, cross-legged with arms straightened out and both fists on the knees, with the face downward. ‘For twelve days I had to perform the same ponsan routine, while remaining in chains which encircled my waist and were attached to an iron bar between my legs. I had sores and bruises on my ankles, forehead, elbows and knees. During that time I was also made to “hop like a frog” whilst in chains.’27
The regime uses a variety of forms of torture. According to a report by the AAPP, ‘The Darkness We See: Torture in Burma’s Interrogation Centers and Prisons’, ‘it is not possible to separate physical torture from psychological torture, as most torture is intended to simultaneously inflict physical and psychological harm’.28 The degrading humiliation begins from the moment political detainees are arrested, usually in the middle of the night with a knock on the door. As is described in ‘The Darkness We See …’:
They show no warrant; there is no need for legal matters when the authorities decide to take you away. You are hooded and handcuffed; now you must rely entirely on your captors. You are made to lie down in the back of a van, a gun held at your back … You are not told where you are going, and there is no point in asking. Suddenly, the van stops and you hear the cruel voices of your captors ordering you to get out, to jump, to duck, to twist, to turn, all for their amusement. You are taken to a small room where the torture begins.29
Typically, according to this report, a prisoner is stripped naked and beaten unconscious. ‘You are awakened when your captors drench you with a bucket of water. The beatings begin again. This time a rod is run up and down your shins until you scream out in agony as your flesh peels off. Your captors are laughing and threatening to kill you and your family. You remain hooded and handcuffed, unable to defend yourself or move away.’30
A common form of torture is forcing prisoners to sit in excruciating positions for many hours without moving. ‘You are forced to hold unnatural positions for extended periods of time until you collapse,’ the AAPP reports. These include pretending to ride a motorcycle or fly an aeroplane. ‘You are denied food, water, sleep and must beg to use the toilet. You are degraded, bruised and battered. Your entire existence is reduced to the struggle to survive.’31
Torture is particularly severe in the interrogation centre, where prisoners are held before being jailed. Moe Aye spent two months in an interrogation centre in 1990, before being sentenced to seven years in Insein Prison for his involvement in the 1988 demonstrations. ‘The interrogation centre is worse than prison,’ he explains. ‘In prison you can see the sky, you can see light, you can see other people, and you can talk
to other inmates. In the interrogation centre, they put a blindfold on you. I never knew day or night for two months. If I wanted to go to the toilet, someone would have to show the way. It was very tiring.’ He was also subjected to sleep deprivation, held in stocks, and tortured with a hot metal rod on his wrist. ‘When they left the room, I took the blindfold off and checked my wrist. My skin was burnt and blistered.’
In September 2009, Myo Yan Naung Thein was released after two years in prison. His description of what happened fits with almost every other account. After being hooded, kicked and beaten, he was forced ‘to kneel on all fours like a dog’. One of the interrogators then sat on Myo Yan Naung Thein’s back. ‘They tortured me very brutally,’ he said. ‘My hands were tied behind my back, they kicked and punched me. They locked me in a dark, wet room with no windows … One of my legs was deteriorating day by day … And now I cannot stand up or walk. I can only walk if I have a person on either side to help me.’ But, with extraordinary defiance typical of Burmese political prisoners, he expressed a resolve to continue. ‘After we were imprisoned, we learned more and more about the injustices carried out by the military government, and that strengthened my beliefs even more. So who will keep fighting if we don’t? We have to carry on.’32
Being forced to sit as a dog, or worse, being jailed in a dog kennel, is again not uncommon. Zarganar was imprisoned briefly after supporting the Buddhist monks in 2007, and he told Human Rights Watch: ‘I was held in the dog cells in solitary confinement for eight days and was not allowed to bathe for three days. I had to relieve myself on a tray. When it became full, I tried to urinate under the door but the dogs tried to bite me.’33
Eyewitnesses I have spoken to say that conditions in Burma’s labour camps are even worse. Prisoners are forced to work on road construction projects, and rubber and tea plantations, shackled like slaves. In one camp in Chin State, prisoners are yoked like oxen and forced to plough the fields.34 Known as yebet sakhan, it is estimated by some that there are at least 110 such camps, containing between 50,000 and 100,000 prisoners. Some inmates are convicted criminals, although others are jailed for petty crimes – one boy, for example, was sent without trial to a labour camp because he took a horse out for a ‘joy ride’ and was accused of stealing. According to a man who claims to have visited over thirty of these labour camps,35 taking medical and food aid to prisoners, they have to keep their heads bowed at all times. If they look up, they are beaten, and if they cry out, they are beaten again. Sleep deprivation is routine. In at least four camps, each prisoner has an empty milk can attached to the end of his bed, and every fifteen minutes throughout the night he is required to strike the can and shout his personal number, to prove he has not escaped.36 Held in leg-irons, prisoners suffer constant chafing causing lacerations, inflammation and infections. They are forced to work from 6 a.m. until 6 p.m. without a rest, except for one meal a day which may consist of a spoon of boiled rice mixed with wild banana leaf and sweet potato leaf. Prisoners are so hungry that they eat rats,37 pigswill and some, reportedly, eat their own faeces.38 ‘One man was so malnourished and thin that you could see his intestines moving, looking like worms,’ he told me.39
Harsh punishments are dealt out to anyone contemplating escape. Some who have attempted to escape have had their hands tied behind their backs and then been dragged along the ground ‘like a dead animal’, says the pastor. Others have had burning bamboo placed alongside them so that they are slowly ‘roasted’.40 In 2003 at Cang El Zawl Prison in Sagaing Division, soldiers invited prisoners to escape, as a set-up to provide an example to others who might be thinking of attempting it. When they were caught, because they were unable to run fast enough in their leg-irons, they were re-arrested, and placed over a very hot fire. They were then stabbed repeatedly, and put in a tub of salt water. Most of them died.41
Even apart from the physical torture, the conditions of prison cells in Burma are almost unbearable. ‘You are placed in a cell with five of your colleagues, two criminals and several rats. You are given undercooked and dirty food to eat. You sleep on the cold concrete. Your toilet is a small pot which overflows, creating maggots and a foul, nauseating smell. You are allowed seven plates of water to wash yourself. You have nothing to read, no mental stimulation.’42
Khun Saing confirms these conditions. When he was jailed for the second time, in 1990, accused of being a communist, he was tortured in Insein Prison. His trial was held in the prison, and he was brought into the court hooded and handcuffed. When his hood was removed, he found he was surrounded by armed soldiers. ‘It was a military court, with judges in army uniforms,’ he told me. He was held in an eight- by twelve-foot cell with seven other prisoners, and allowed out for only fifteen minutes a day, for a shower.
Khun Saing was jailed for a third time in 1998. Among the prisoners he shared a cell with, some had HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis and leprosy. Khun Saing contracted tuberculosis as a result, but had to struggle to receive medical treatment. In Shwe Bo Prison near Mandalay, where he was held, there was no doctor, and he had to wait four months before receiving any attention. When he was finally allowed to visit a local hospital, the doctor refused to see him. ‘I was in ankle chains and a prison suit,’ he recalls. ‘I think she thought I was a criminal.’ However, after some persuasion, the hospital X-rayed him, but then claimed he was in good health. Using his own medical knowledge, he pointed out a clear ‘shadowy ring’ on the X-ray, showing a tuberculosis cavity on the middle lobe of his lung. He bribed the prison staff to send the X-ray to Mandalay for examination, as there were no radiologists in Shwe Bo. The result came back – a clear case of tuberculosis. The prison authorities relented, and he was given proper treatment.43
Despite the restrictions, political prisoners show an extraordinary degree of ingenuity in finding ways to communicate with each other. According to Khun Saing, they pass messages to each other on tiny pieces of paper, using toothpaste or a small piece of lead from a pencil – ‘very easy to hide,’ he says. For paper, prisoners improvise, using labels from a piece of bread, leaves, the backs of plates, or cheroots. ‘Then we pass the plates by using the criminal prisoners as messengers, and we give them bribes such as a cheroot,’ Khun Saing says. Criminal prisoners – as opposed to political detainees – are given jobs by prison authorities, such as cleaning parts of the jail, and so they are able to move around the prison in a way that the political prisoners are not. ‘Sometimes we used cheroots to write important information in, and then we ask other prisoners to take this cheroot to this cell, this cheroot to that cell. In this way we can communicate.’ Political prisoners who are allowed out of their cell to shower, for fifteen minutes, take the opportunity to exchange news and information with other prisoners too. ‘When we get the chance to pass all the cells, we throw [small pieces of paper with information on] to other prisoners. It’s a chance of three or four seconds,’ says Khun Saing.
In addition to communicating with each other, political prisoners use their time to think, meditate, paint, study and write – again, with ingenuity. Khun Saing composed songs, which were smuggled out by other prisoners who had been released. The AAPP made the songs into an album, called ‘Songs from the Cage’. He also taught himself English by reading books provided by the Red Cross. Although he is a Buddhist, he read the entire Bible in English, twice.44 Similarly, Bo Kyi had an English dictionary smuggled in, so that he could study. ‘I ate the pages as I learned them,’ he said. ‘I also learned I had no future. It [jail] taught me to live in the present, otherwise I would have gone crazy thinking about the future.’45
Tin Aye, who was sentenced to twenty years in jail in 1989, taught himself English in prison. ‘I read newspapers, secretly, and when we couldn’t get any newspapers, I would ask other people who spoke English to teach me some vocabulary. I learned three words a day,’ he told me when I met him on the Thailand–Burma border in 2010. In 1999 he was released after completing ten years as part of a partial amnesty, but it was, he says, a ‘sh
am’ release. ‘At the gate of Mandalay Prison they told me “We release you now”, and showed me the release document. When I reached for the document, they took it from me and showed me another document – “We arrest you”. I was immediately jailed again, and served in total sixteen years.’ In 2001, he went on hunger strike for five days, demanding an Oxford English Dictionary, more time to exercise, better food and medical care. The jail authorities granted him the dictionary and the food improved. Within three weeks of his release in 2005, he enrolled in a computer class. He had never seen a computer before, but within months had qualified as a graphic designer and found work in publishing. When he fled to the Thailand–Burma border, he found work as a translator for UN agencies, the International Rescue Committee (IRC), and other NGOs.
Moe Aye, who also learned English in prison from books that were smuggled in, explains this extraordinary spirit: ‘You are put in prison because the regime wants to close your eyes, your ears and kill your brain. So you have to resist. The regime wants to kill our future, so we need to prove that they can put us in prison but they cannot take away our dreams and our future.’
In 1999, the Red Cross was allowed to visit Burma’s prisons, and according to Khun Saing, conditions started to improve. ‘We were provided with wooden beds, as until then we slept on a concrete floor, and we were given medicine, soap, and enough food,’ he recalls. ‘After the Red Cross visited, we could spend at least four hours a day outside the cell.’ This lasted six years, however, and in 2005 the regime tightened up and the Red Cross was forced to abandon prison visits. ‘When the prison visits stopped, the restrictions tightened,’ said Khun Saing.
In 2008 and 2009, the number of political prisoners in Burma escalated dramatically, particularly following the Saffron Revolution. The AAPP claims that political prisoners rose 78 per cent in 2008 compared to the previous year,46 and over 1,000 people were arrested and detained following the Saffron Revolution.47 By September 2009, the number of political prisoners had reached 2,211, described by the Alternative ASEAN Network on Burma as ‘a record high’.48 On 17 September 2009 the regime released 7,114 prisoners, for good behaviour, but only 128 of these were political prisoners, and some of their terms had already expired. The release was timed a few days before the UN General Assembly was due to consider a resolution on Burma, and was obviously a propaganda trick. As U Win Tin remarked, ‘This is the junta trying to make bad things appear good. It’s like putting make-up on a dead person’s face.’49 Even in 2011, when the regime was trying to convince the democracy movement and the international community that it was changing, it released a tiny proportion of political prisoners, and very few high-profile activists. It was not until January 2012, as already described, that significant releases occurred and the regime began to show it was serious about change.
Burma- a Nation at the Crossroads Page 23