By Richard Humphries
Tokyo Journal / Summer 2001
“We away from Mother’s garden
Sighing repeatedly from the prison’s iron bars
At our rotten future
Can only utter empty threats”
(From “Scent of Steel Flowers from Prison,” a collection of anonymous verse by imprisoned Burmese women)
Most societies undergo a generational pattern of defining experience. This might be a war, worldwide as in the 1940s, or more localized, as later in Vietnam. It could be an economic cycle—the disheartening depths of depression years or, conversely, the irrational exuberance of a boom’s gilded age. Burma’s present and previous generation have an acquaintance with both war and depression but is there a clearer symbol? For the country as a whole metaphorically, and for thousands more in a very literal sense, the clank of the iron-barred prison door may well be the collective memory.
It doesn’t take much to earn cell space in Burma. Direct political activity certainly makes the ruling junta see red. A series of laws, some dating from British times, serve as justification. One, the 1950 ?Emergency Provisions Act? has several clauses. Section 5(j) is used by the junta to imprison up to seven years, or fine, or both, anyone who ''causes or intends to spread false news, knowing beforehand that it is untrue.?
More recently the regime has targeted the microchip. Under the 1996 “Computer Science Development Law,” anyone who imports, keeps, or utilizes a computer without government permission is in trouble. After conviction, they will be “punished with imprisonment for a term which may extend from a minimum of 7 years to a maximum of 15 years and may also be liable to a fine.”
In Burma, even irony and satire are enemies to be routed. Pa Pa Lay and Zu Law were well-known comedians and members of an a-nyeint troupe from Mandalay. (A-nyeint is a traditional style of Burmese entertainment that combines orchestral music with dances, jokes, and humorous skits.) Their performance, lampooning the junta, at Aung San Suu Kyi’s compound in early 1996, was one the regime claimed was “liable to destabilize the country and affect the security of the state.” The two comedians were arrested, tried without legal representation, and in August 1996 sentenced to seven years imprisonment each.
For some, jail is the end of the road. James Leander (Leo) Nichols, a 65-year-old Anglo-Burmese businessman, honorary consul for Norway, and godfather to Aung San Suu Kyi, died while under confinement on June 22, 1996. His infraction was the ?illegal possession of fax machines.? Evidently, the real reason was that those faxes were used to transmit Aung San Suu Kyi’s ?Letters From Burma? series to a Japanese newspaper that was publishing them.
In a recent report, Amnesty International estimated that there are currently 1,850 people being held as political prisoners in Burma’s jails. This does not include those who have died from beatings or through the lack of medical attention. Nor does it include those held and subsequently released, often after years of incarceration.
One Thailand-based organization is working hard to help the victims of imprisonment. The Assistance Association for Political Prisons (AAPP) was founded on December 1, 1999 by a group of Burmese exiles. They know their subject only too well. All spent time in Burma’s jails.
Aung Din is one member. A student activist who organized pro-democracy demonstrations against his country’s military rulers, Aung Din was arrested on April 23, 1989 by Military Intelligence. After 13 months of confinement, he was sentenced to 4 years with hard labor. He spent most of those years in solitary confinement and fled abroad after release.
Two other members, who prefer anonymity, came from much different backgrounds. Both were in the Burmese Army during the 1989 troubles. “X” was an officer and “Y” was a private and paratrooper in an airborne unit. Their crime was that they possessed a sense of individual responsibility in the face of hierarchical authority and did not follow orders. The orders concerned the Army’s response to pro-democracy demonstrators and were “shoot to kill.” Today “Y,” an artist as well as activist, teaches drawing to the children of migrant Burmese laborers in Thailand free of charge.
Bo Kyi, spokesman for the AAPP, served two terms totaling seven years. This March in Europe, he received a student peace prize from Norway and accepted a Czech award on behalf of Min Ko Naing, the imprisoned student leader. Bo Kyi had many talks with European officials and spoke with them in fluent English. He learned that language in jail, without tapes or books, by whispering with a cellmate when the guards were away.
Bo Kyi first became involved in politics in 1988 because, “Most people knew there were strikes at the Rangoon Institute of Technology,” he said. “The government killed a student named Phone Maw and we protested. Our movement was brutally crushed. I was involved in it because I hated injustice.”
He spent time in three prisons, in Mandalay, in Thayawaddy, and in the country’s most notorious detention center, Insein, just outside Rangoon. Insane just about sums up the conditions in these jails.
Torture is common and Bo Kyi was twice beaten severely for protesting prison conditions. One of Bo Kyi’s friends, doing hard labor at Myingyan Prison, was beaten daily, fed poorly, and eventually died. Political prisoners lack sufficient water for bathing and drinking. Authorities routinely deny adequate medical treatment even when a prisoner’s condition reaches a life-threatening stage. ?When I was sick, it was difficult for me to go to the hospital,? Bo Kyi said. ?I had to use the medicine my family provided instead.?
Food is bland, usually rice, fish paste, and talapaw, a concoction resembling, but hardy deserving, the name of soup. This food is not enough and prisoners typically have to depend upon food (and medical) parcels from their families.
Family aid is not always possible. Some are desperately poor, living at the margin of survival. The regime exacerbates matters by often jailing its enemies in prisons far removed from the prisoner’s home. And there is worse in store for families. According to the AAPP, “Military Intelligence (MIS) and local authorities regularly intimidate and persecute the family members of political prisoners. The MIS frequently confiscate their belongings and harass the economic, social, and educational lives of the family members of political prisoners. In most cases they lose their jobs.”
Anyone who has read Solzhenitsyn knows how the Gulag authorities used ?blatnye,? imprisoned common criminals, to manipulate and terrorize political inmates. In Burma it is much the same. ?We had a lot of problems with criminals,? Bo Kyi remembered, ?and they were treated much better than us.?
Still there are some small victories. “Once in 1996, when I was in Insein, there were two criminals mixed in with two political,” Bo Kyi recalled. “One of the political prisoners was very good looking. The criminals tried to rape him but we were able to stop that.”
The country has some 36 major prisons of which 20 hold political prisoners. This is not the only form of detention, however. In the past, when Aung San Suu Kyi’s party, the National League for Democracy (NLD) announced a conference or other political gathering, NLD members were frequently picked up and taken to government-run guesthouses, supposedly for consultations. Aung San Suu Kyi herself has been subjected to periods of house arrest, the longest being for five years until 1995.
Now the ruling junta is engaged in secret talks with Aung San Suu Kyi. The stated goal is to produce a political settlement to Burma’s woes. These talks may in time produce results though their initial nature, that of a controlling junta bargaining with a single individual confined to her home, has caused more than one observer to liken them to “speaking to a bird in a gilded cage.”
The AAPP is working towards several objectives. It is documenting and reporting on the oppression suffered by political prisoners and encouraging the international community to pressure the regime to prevent further persecution. It is also struggling to ensure that basic human rights are respected in the prisons and that authorities provide the basic necessities of food and medicine. Just as importantly, it is striving to protect prisoners and their families after any are released and trying to help ex-prisoners with needed physical and mental rehabilitation.
For now the jails remain a malignant cancer on Burmese society. And for voices (like the poet above) that speak out in agony there are special dangers. After release, another poet revealed part of his imprisonment trauma to the AAPP. ?One of the intelligence officers screamed at me ‘You are a poet? You wrote this satire against our government? Which material did you use? You used these fingers to criticize us.’ After that my fingers were stretched upon the concrete and they proceeded to trample my fingers with their jungle boots. (RH)