Myanmar Spring Chronicle – August 04 Scenes
MoeMaKa, August 05, 2023
Prisons in Myanmar that are becoming torture centers
During the U Thein Sein government regime after 2010 and during the NLD government regime, the jail manual for prison staff was revised to prevent them from beating or torturing prisoners. With the help of some international organizations, prison staff were educated for a period of time not to commit human rights violations such as beatings and torture. However, after the military coup, all these activities were thrown into the sand, and the ranks of the prisons were replaced by those who had transferred from the military, and the prisons were transformed into torture centers for the political prisoners.
Within a few months of the military coup, the civilian chief of the Insein prison was replaced by a prison official who had transferred to civilian departments from the military. Similarly, in other prisons and police stations, officers who have transferred to civilian departments from the military to civilians have gradually occupied the authority positions.
The leadership of the military council used the stance of former military officers to oppress strictly the opposition politicians with hatred, to prevent the leak of internal information via those called watermelons to the media and the outside, as the staff of the Department of Correction, who were originally from the civil department and not transformed from the military, might oppose the military coup and not support the coup.
A decade of education and organizing to change the shape of the Department of Correction is no longer a thing, and the correctional prisons have returned to the situation of the early days of the SLORC and SPDC military regimes, where those who are incarcerated on political charges are being more oppressed.
After the military coup, prison riots, prison break-outs, and escape incidents occurred frequently in the past two years. In the incident of escape that happened in March of this year, the police guard was asked to stop the car for a while, and then the prisoners snatched the gun from the police and ran after shooting the police while they were being taken out of the court from Nay Pyi Taw to Yamethin Court. In this Yamethin incident, it was reported in the news that it was done by people facing criminal charges without the involvement of political figures.
A similar incident happened in May of this year. Prisoners who had been arrested on political charges from Taungoo Prison escaped while being taken out of prison to the court after shooting at the police and soldiers guarding them with the weapons they had robbed from them. Some of them reportedly escaped.
In 2022, there were prison riots in Monywa and Hpa-An, which resulted in beatings, solidary confinements, and many inmates were moved to other prisons. Earlier this year, in the Pathein prison riot, there were shootings in the crackdown on the riot, resulting in 2 deaths and many injuries.
The reason for these prison riots is mainly due to the brutal repressive rule in the prison.
During the NLD government regime, there were also several prison riots, and at that time, the prison riots were caused by those who were not satisfied with not being included in the amnesty programs at that time.
In prisons, families have been banned from visiting to see their imprisoned family members since the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic. Then, after the coup, it continued to be banned for years due to the Covid infection and political instability till now, though the Covid epidemic is no longer a concern. It may be that the intention is not to spread the messages from the prison to the outside, but as long as there are people who have to attend court, the outsiders can find out what is going on in the prison one way or another.
The most brutal acts that occurred these days were that those, who were convicted of involving in armed movements and attacks, were taken out of prison, beaten, and tortured to death during the interrogation process, or those, who were already detained in prisons, were transferred to the hands of the military and then killed. These are events that have not happened before. After the court verdict, as for prisoners who have been taken into custody by the head of the prison except for crimes that occur again inside the prison, they are not allowed to be taken out, and tortured to death.
However, during the regime of the coup military council, such acts would only be regarded as an act of revenge against the political hostages in their possession when their army suffered casualties due to armed activities without considering laws and procedures. It must be said that this kind of act is a war crime that no government has the right to do.
In this way, the prisons in Myanmar are turning into torture camps for political prisoners where they can lose their lives.