Editor's note: The name Myanmar has been replaced with Burma in this
story at the author's request.
Whenever I gaze into the night's multitude of glittering stars, my thoughts
return to the seven years I spent in Burma's notorious Insein and Myingyan
prisons. The memories crowd into my mind and I am overcome by feelings.
Thinking about my friends who remain in that cloudy, mysterious and monstrous
world, I am often left in tears.
I come from a poor family in Yangon, the son of a mechanic. At midnight on
September 23, 1998, after two days of intensive interrogation - including
kicking and beating - I found myself in a small, dingy cell at the largest and
most-feared detention center
in Burma. I was a first-year university student and 20 years old at that time.
Two days earlier, military intelligence personnel came to my family's home and
arrested me on charges of participation in anti-government activities. That
misfortune did not fall upon me unexpected. I did get involved in the movement
and went beyond the limits known to everyone in Burma. Now, I was beginning to
face all the predictable consequences.
Although I did not really regret everything I did, I was stricken with grief,
thinking of how my parents were writhing with pain. They did not know where I
was detained or how I was being treated until several months later.
At Insein, I was confined to a small cell all the time. I was not allowed to
contact anyone. I was not tortured since the interrogation, but life was very
unpleasant. The prison diet was neither tasty nor nutritious. Sometimes I ate
cooked rice with a strong bad smell, and the curry was a blend of water green
roots, a spoonful of saffron powder and a good amount of water. After two or
three months of living on such food, my tongue and stomach wriggled so much I
sometimes felt like chewing my own thigh.
I still vividly remember longing for a bottle of salt and a handful of chili in
those days - the two tastes I had never liked in my life. I felt ready to eat
everything; it was a revelation that my tongue could accept all sorts of food.
There was nothing in my room but a small wooden bed and a worn blanket. Even
the water pot was outside the bars. In October, winter had already set in, and
without warm clothes and blankets, I was completely helpless to the night's
bone-chilling winds and hordes of mosquitoes. By day, I was starved like a
vulture.
According to the teachings of Buddha, we are totally responsible for everything
that happens to us, good or bad. I often wondered: "What did I do in this life
to suffer like this? If I did nothing seriously wrong in this life, then what
did I do in my past lives?"
It took four months of imprisonment to become accustomed to life in jail.
Although I still speculated on how the government would decide my fate, all
hopes of release had been dashed; some of my friends were sentenced to long
imprisonments. I learned from the prison guards that only when I became an
official prisoner, would I have the chance to contact my parents and get the
necessary food and clothing to ease my starvation and destitution. I earnestly
waited my day.
In the first week of January 1999, together with 60 of my friends, many of whom
were my age, I was tried in a court inside the Insein prison compound. The
proceedings were amazingly fast.
A few days before the actual trial, more than 50 students including myself were
taken to the backroom of the very prison court where Aung San Suu Kyi is being
tried this week. [1] Like a waiter reading out a menu, a man of short stature
read aloud to us the charges written on a sheet of paper. Everyone was charged
with breaching section 5 (e) [22] of the 1950 Emergency Provision Act - broadly
interpreted as causing disturbance to national security and stability. Except
for a few students, the rest of us got additional charges related to either
unlawful association or illegal printing.
On the day of the trial, the local authorities who raided our houses together
with military intelligence personnel came into the court as government
witnesses. The intelligence officers walked around the court as two government
lawyers were busy on old typewriters. The judge was named Thaung Nyunt, the
same official now presiding over Aung San Suu Kyi's case. He was picking his
teeth in a leisurely manner as the court filled with conversations between
prisoners. We had all been kept in separate places since arrest, and were more
than happy to talk - indifferent to the charges the judge would soon make
against us.
No one seemed happy except us. The government witnesses were sitting in a
corner with sheepish faces; a female lawyer with a clearly sad face was typing
with her eyes downcast; and military intelligence were standing nearby in an
apologetic manner. Apart from the judge - seemingly unfazed by what he was
doing - all those representing the regime and assisting in the trial looked no
different than grimy puppets in a Burmese marionette show.
We were denied access to lawyers and legal consultants, and were not allowed to
contact our families until that day. The judge did not bother to read the
judgements to each of us. Instead, he made block judgements, shouting "All you
who breach the section [5] get seven years. All you who breach the section [17]
of Illegal Printing Act get seven years." I was sentenced to 21 years in
prison: seven years for illegal printing, seven years for distribution of those
papers and another seven years for participation in anti-government activities.
As we had completely resigned ourselves to fate and the trial was taking place
under the close watch of military intelligence personnel, we did not attempt to
make any complaints against the statue-like judge. Also, we were warned not to
make such complaints in court by the authorities. We made ourselves busy
counting the number of years we were to spend in jail.
Despite the lack of transparency and the off-hand manner of our trial, the
interpretation of the law was perversely humorous: if participation in an
anti-government demonstration called for a seven-year jail term, then one who
took part in three separate protests in three separate locations was handed
down 21 years; one caught with two kinds of anti-government pamphlets got a
28-year jail sentence, each pamphlet netting 14 years.
As a result of such implausible math, some of my friends received sentences of
over 50 years in prison - an unprecedented level of punishment for political
prisoners in the history of our country. During the British colonial days, jail
sentence for a dissident was normally six months. Since we gained independence
from the British, it climbed up to seven years, then 10 years, to an
uncountable number of years today.
Shortly after the trial, we were all transferred to different prisons around
the country in April 1999 - the regime's attempt to suppress any kind of
organized movement inside its prisons. First, I was transferred to Mandalay
prison in the upper part of the country. Three days later, I was transferred to
a nearby prison called Myingyan, reputed to be the worst of all prisons until
the International Committee for Red Cross (ICRC) visit in 1999.
Severe forms of torture had been going on. Prisoners were often flogged for
ridiculous reasons and forced to labor day in and day out. I experienced a
fraction of that degree of torture. On the day of arrival, I was first beaten
inside a dingy cell and forced to sit cross-legged with my back against the
door. Then I was taken out in a small ground and beaten by 10 criminals with a
prison officer standing nearby. All the rapists, bandits, murderers and
swindlers were appointed as disciplinarians to control us.
Fear prevailed in every corner of the prison: tension and fear among criminals,
and between criminals and political prisoners, between criminals and prison
guards, between prison guards and prison officers. Everything went unchecked in
that small prison where over 100 political prisoners were detained, many of
them having been there since 1989 and 1990.
The ICRC's visit in October 1999 put an end to that atmosphere. For the first
time in many years, prisoners were allowed to speak to each other by screaming
over their cell walls. Emaciated figures with gaunt faces started popping out
from the prison doors when I was taken for a 10-minute shower.
The fact that the regime has zero tolerance of its dissidents is not the only
reason why so many people have been languishing in prisons for years. The
regime is holding these prisoners as hostages to use as bargaining chips to
deal with both international and domestic pressure. Burmese prisoners are to
the regime what nuclear weapons are to North Korea.
Every time the government finds itself under pressure, a few political
prisoners (who have almost served their sentences) are released in the name of
"amnesty", together with many criminals who have also done their time. The
state-run media then carry the news the next day: "Since the government is
convinced that these prisoners can contribute to the well-being of the society
while it is marching towards a disciplined democracy, they are pardoned and
freed from the respective correctional facilities."
I was unexpectedly released in such a fashion on July 6, 2005. I saw the sky
and its horizon - something I had yearned to see for seven long years - and I
was reunited with my family. Many of my friends who were sentenced in 1998
remain locked up inside prisons all over Burma. They were just teenagers when
they were arrested, and without releasing young people such as these, it is
very hard to believe that the regime is willing to solve the problems of our
country by any peaceful means.
Note
1. Democracy icon and Nobel Peace Prize winner Aung San Suu Kyi, who has spent
13 of the past 19 years under house arrest, is accused of violating the terms
of her detention by allowing Mr John Yettaw, a Vietnam veteran and Mormon, to
spend two nights in her family's villa on Lake Inya in the suburbs of Yangon
(Rangoon).
Swe Win is a former political prisoner now working as a freelance
reporter.
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