Torture and death 'routine' behind bars in Burma

He was one of the fortunate ones, but his friend and fellow political prisoner, Aung Kyaw Moe, was not. They were together in one of Burma's notorious jails where Aung Kyaw was beaten to death by prison guards, for refusing to end a hunger strike. "I was shocked when we heard the news," recalls Bo Kyi, 41, who survived seven years and three months in two jails to tell the tale of his 38-year-old friend, who was arrested for his political activity and sentenced to 20 years' imprisonment with hard labor. There are others, too, that the soft-spoken survivor of torture and brutality remembers, such as Cho Gyi, a political activist and artist who died after enduring harsh conditions for three years in a labor camp in Mandalay, in central Burma. And now, following a report released this week by a group of former political prisoners, the world will gain a better insight into one of the symbols that has come to represent the brutal Burmese military dictatorship–prisons. Released by the Assistance Association for Political Prisoners (AAPP), the report contains chilling accounts of 127 political activists who died from torture in Burmese prisons over the past 16 years. "We want the world to know about the human rights violations going on in the prisons and labor camps and for the international community to take some action," Bo Kyi, joint secretary of AAPP, which is based in the northwestern Thai town of Mae Sai, told IPS. "Otherwise things could get worse." Of these, 90 died in prison, eight in interrogation centers located in military camps or police stations, four in labor camps and "10 shortly after being released from prison," reveals the report, "Eight Seconds of Silence: The Death of Democracy Activists Behind Bars." "Fifteen activists have disappeared from the prisons and their whereabouts remain unknown to date." The report exposes a side of the brutality that is often overshadowed by the global attention paid to Aung Sang Suu Kyi, the pro-democracy leader and Nobel peace prize laureate who has been under house arrest for over ten of the past 17 years. Rangoon's junta, which has renamed the country Myanmar, has placed 1,156 democracy activists in jail for their political beliefs. Burma currently has over 50 labor camps, 43 prisons and scores of interrogation centers in the police stations and military camps spread across the country. "Nothing is more revealing about the situation of human rights in a country than the existence of political prisoners. They embody the denial of the most basic freedoms essential to humankind, such as freedom of opinion and assembly," writes Paulo Sergio Pinheiro, UN human rights envoy for Burma, in a foreword to the report. "The very manner in which such persons are treated further reflects upon the level of esteem in which a government holds its own people," he adds. "Allegations of incommunicado detention, torture, ill-treatment, poor diet, substandard hygiene levels, absence and denial of adequate medical attention are all too commonplace." What happened to Aung Hlain Win last May is typical. The 30-year-old was grabbed by men while eating dinner in a Rangoon restaurant and taken to an unknown location. He was subsequently tortured to death in "one of Burma's many interrogation centers" for being a member of the opposition party that Suu Kyi leads, the National League for Democracy, states the report. "Three days after his death, the authorities finally informed Aung Hlain Win's family of his fate, claiming his death was a result of a heart attack, not torture." Age has also not come in the way of political prisoners meeting premature deaths in custody, as was the case with Khin Maung, who was 68 when he succumbed to torture. Nor has gender, as the chilling details of 27-year-old Naw Thin Su's end reveal. "She was brutally raped and tortured during interrogation and while in prison" but the prison authorities "claimed that her death was due to a health condition." "The people arrested were not breaking the law but acting out of their own beliefs," Soe Aung, spokesman for the National Council of the Union of Burma (NCUB), an umbrella group of Burmese exile organizations, told IPS. "Whoever expresses their opinion is viewed as a threat." Even the judicial system has caved into pressure from the junta that has ruled the Southeast Asian country since a 1962 coup. "From the pre-trial stage, people arrested for political activity are denied basic rights, such as no access to a lawyer," Aung Htoo, general secretary of the Burma Lawyers Council, told IPS. "The trials are held in secret, not open to the public and there is little fairness." He attributes the inhuman prison conditions to a 1975 law, the state protection act, which brought to an end some measure of comfort political prisoners had enjoyed during the first 12 years of military government. Before 1975, such prisoners could have regular contact with families, order food from home, communicate with fellow prisoners, read newspapers and even seek hospital visits when ill. "But not anymore," says Aung Htoo. "The current situation in prisons is the worst in Burma. Political prisoners are isolated and subject to harsh treatment." Bo Kyi bears testimony to such torment. He was beaten with rubber pipes and kicked by jailers wearing rubber boots every two weeks. His legs were shackled with iron chains and he was deprived food, water and sleep.