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Political prisoners tread softly after ordeal

Irrawaddy - June 30, 2011

Simon Roughneen, Mae Sot – Z was one of 55 Burmese political prisoners released as part of a controversial May 2011 amnesty that saw almost 17,000 people leave jail.

"I was released on May 17 under the so-called amnesty", he said, after spending almost four years in Myingyan prison, far from his family in Arakan State.

X, another recently-freed political prisoner, was accused of being one of ringleaders of the 2007 Saffron Revolution, a series of nationwide demonstrations against rising living costs that spiralled into a monk-led protest against military rule.

Recalling the legal sham that passed for his trial he said, "my lawyer was not allowed to defend me at court, and in fact I was sentenced before the trial was finished."

X's summary injustice was in contrast to the experience of Y, another of the recently-released contingent who was also caught up in the Saffron dragnet. He recounts that the trial period "took almost one year and I had been tried every week since the middle of December 2007", before finally receiving a nine-year sentence on Nov. 11, 2008.

Jail conditions for Burma's political prisoners are always harsh, according to accounts given by former detainees. Y recalls his time in the remote Hkamti prison, where he and the other detainees had to drink water drawn from a nearby stream as there was no other source in the surrounding area. "There is a gold mine nearby and the water is contaminated," said Y. "And there was no doctor at the prison."

Y was transferred to Hkamti from the police battalion at Kyauktan Township, where former United Nations human rights envoy Paulo Sergio Pinheiro was scheduled to visit during October 2007.

Prior to the envoy's arrival, however, Y and the other detainees were moved to another police station in what he believes was a ruse aimed at pretending that no civilians were arbitrarily detained during the crackdown on Saffron protests. UN human rights envoys are often refused entry to Burma, and when it is granted, only limited access is given to political detainees.

Remembering some of the violence meted out by the government's security forces during that time, Y says, "I was beaten and arrested near the Shwe Gon Taing bus stop in Rangoon by Swan Arr Shin members." These were the notorious faux-civilian hired-thug group, whose name translates as "Masters of Force," that the government sometimes deploys to intimidate or harm opponents.

The Mae Sot-based Assistance Association for Political Prisoners (AAPP), which helped with the setting-up of these interviews, estimates that 10,000 Burmese may have been tortured by the country's security personnel since the August 1988 student rebellion against the government.

Some political detainees escape this cruelty, however, even if prison conditions in themselves are harsh. X said that, "although I wasn't physically tortured when I was detained in both prisons, I faced health difficulties as the authorities do not provide adequate healthcare."

After his arrest on Oct. 9, 2007, at his home in Arakan State, Z was tortured. He explains that he "was handcuffed and taken by motorcycle to the police station. I was continuously interrogated during night and day since the time I arrived in police custody.

"I was also deprived of drinking water, meals, sleep and was not allowed to have a bath. When interrogated, I was forcefully beaten on my ears, punched in the face and told to stand up for long periods."

Y says that the absence of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) has made life tougher than it might otherwise be for political prisoners. The ICRC has suspended visits to political prisoners since early 2006, citing the State Peace and Development Council's (SPDC) insistence that it monitor their meetings, a contravention of ICRC procedures and international law.

The SPDC was the name for the Burmese military regime prior to the establishment of a nominally-civilian government in March 2011, after rigged elections the previous November produced a landslide win for junta's proxy party – known as the Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP). Attempts by some of the few opposition politicians in Burma's new parliament to promote an amnesty for the country's political prisoners and prisoners of conscience have so far fallen flat.

The freeing of political prisoners – who are deemed criminals by the Burmese government – is being treated by some Western nations as something of a litmus test for the new Thein Sein-led administration's reformist intentions.

Since the end of the opening session of Burma's new Parliament, some opposition groups – including the National Democratic Front, Democratic Party Myanmar and the Peace and Diversity Party – have sought to stage demonstrations in support of Burma's political detainees, but their requests to do so have been turned down.

The AAPP says that there are 1992 political prisoners and prisoners of conscience in jail inside Burma, of which a total of six have been jailed since the country's Nov. 7, 2010, election, with three of those incarcerated since the April 1, 2011, formation of a quasi-civilian government.

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