The Price of Protest

Prison life in Burma is hard enough for able-bodied men; for women, it can be a vision of hell.

At least 57 of the more than 1,100 political prisoners currently behind bars in Burma are women.

Burma’s women were always prominent on the country’s political scene, joining the anti-colonial struggle that brought independence and then participating in the task of building a viable state. Since the 1988 popular uprising and subsequent crackdown that smothered the last vestiges of democracy, hundreds of women have been locked up for speaking out against their country’s descent into brutal dictatorship.

The courage of these women demands special recognition because of their disdain for the ghastly conditions of prison life that they know await them. The list of abuses is long and makes for depressing reading—beatings and other acts of brutality, sexual harassment, humiliation, primitive living conditions, insufficient food and medical attention, a complete disregard for the special health and sanitary needs of women. one political prisoner described her account of the horrors of life behind bars as her “diary in hell.”

The International Committee of the Red Cross succeeded in persuading the authorities to at least allow approved books into the prisons, but that concession was withdrawn after the organization’ s visits were banned by the regime in December 2005.

The Burmese Women’s Union and the Assistance Association for Political Prisoners (Burma), both working in exile from neighboring Thailand, do what they can to help fill the void left by the departure of the ICRC inspection teams.

Within Burma itself, the job of relieving the dreadful conditions under which women prisoners live is left to their families. But even family members are not safe from official chicanery and harassment.

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Midnight Callers

By Tha Zin
August 1, 2007

Former political prisoner recalls her arrest, detention and maltreatment

It was a deceptively beautiful night, the stars glittering like ice crystals in a cold and black December sky. The ringing tones of an iron bar striking the hours signaled midnight—and then other sounds shattered the silence. Dogs barking, and the ominous clatter of combat boots in the street outside.

I put down the book I was reading and knew the men in heavy boots were coming for me. I still had time to flee the house, but I stayed put. My grandmother was dozing nearby. From the nearby bedroom came the snores of my father.

There were shouts: “Anybody in the house, anybody there? We’re going to check the guest book record…open the door.”

I opened the house door and then the entrance to the compound.

More than a dozen armed soldiers ran into the yard and took up position. I had half expected them, but my grandmother and my parents, roused from sleep, were frightened and confused. A good-looking man in civilian clothes asked me to identify myself and then said: “You know why we are here and what you have done?”

His cold, ruthless eyes stared into mine, and I stared back in reply. The soldiers searched the house, turning the place upside-down. They seized on my collection of books, cassette tapes and my diary. “Come along with us,” I was told.

I gathered together a change of clothes, a toothbrush and toothpaste. My grandmother seemed on the verge of collapse and my mother turned to care for her, helped by some neighbors who had been woken by the excitement. I followed the soldiers into the street.

At the end of the street a black Ranger truck was parked, guarded by two soldiers. They ordered me to get in. As soon as I entered the car, I was blindfolded with a black cloth and the vehicle drove off on what seemed an endless journey, during which I rehearsed in my head the questions I expected to be asked and the answers I would give.

The road finally went uphill and seemed to stop in an open space with trees. I heard the rustle of the leaves in the cool night air and sensed the presence of other people.

Still blindfolded, I was led through several doors, each of which had to be unlocked. I was led to a wooden, backless chair, so high that my feet didn’t touch the ground. The time passed slowly, and I felt very alone and scared. An iron bar sounded 4 a.m. Shortly afterwards, I heard footsteps, people entered the room, and my blindfold was removed.

I had difficulty seeing clearly after so long blindfolded, but then I recognized a table, with two men sitting at it, one of them the man who had led my arrest. A third man stood in the half-light of a lamp, staring inquisitively at me. The second man at the table had the trace of a smile on his swarthy face.

It was a large room, ill-lit by the reddish glow of a single lamp. one wall had a large pane of dark glass, behind which (movie-going had taught me) interrogators were probably sitting and observing their prisoner.

“Right!” said the man with the cold eyes. And the interrogation began. It lasted four days and three nights. The questions were always the same, but sometimes put in reverse order and with words changed. I felt dizzy and stumbled through my replies, even though I wanted to take every care in formulating them.

“When you first answered, it was not like that,” I would be told. And: “Tell me again, carefully.”

Their demands and threats were often backed up with kicks. Combat boots thumped into my back and stomach.

After this “softening up,” I was allowed at least to sleep at night. But sleep was difficult in a cell from where I heard the sounds of prisoners being tortured nearby and their cries and groans of pain. Although I hadn’t slept for days I couldn’t get the sounds out of my mind, and my eyes and ears remained wide open.

Food was a plate of rice and a slice of fish without any oil. I tried to eat as much as I could to keep my strength up, but one day my stomach and back hurt so much from the interrogators’ kicks, that I couldn’t finish my meal. The next day the same plate came back, unwashed. I vomited—it was a very low point in my detention.

My spirits were also very low because of the slander and defamatory abuse thrown by my interrogators at comrades who were risking their lives for the cause of democracy and freedom. The interrogation often took a prurient turn. Questions were put in such a way as to suggest that I had personal reasons for defending certain comrades.

“So what’s your relationship with that man?” was one example. “Are you really interested in politics, or do you just want to get involved with him?” was another.

In the early morning of the tenth day, a group of three or four men entered my cell and ordered me to pack my belongings. I hoped this meant my release, but I instinctively feared the worst.

I was again blindfolded and led to what seemed to be the same vehicle that had brought me here. I seemed to be flanked by two armed soldiers. I heard the sounds of normal life outside, strangely new after nearly 10 days isolated in a detention cell. I told myself not to fear whatever lay ahead, to continue to struggle for justice and truth.

The vehicle stopped in what seemed to be a crowded place.

“Out you get,” I was told. The blindfold was removed, and I tried to take in my surroundings. A high brick wall reared up before me, and I was led to a door at the foot of it. For some reason, I smiled. Prison lay ahead, I now knew.

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Life on Death Row
By Tha Zin
August 1, 2007

Where mental torture is the punishment for minor infringements of prison regulations

The cell I was allotted measured about 15 feet square, with a row of metal bars forming one wall. It was lit by a 40-watt bulb. one corner had a bamboo mat, and there sat my cell-mate, a young woman. I joined her, sitting at one corner of the mat and answering her questions: “Who are you? What interrogation center did you come from? How was your interrogation?” We chatted, describing our experiences. I described the beatings and the kicks, and she showed me how her fingers had been injured by her interrogators with a sharp piece of bamboo.

At about 8 p.m., as the prison fell into silence, I heard knocks on the back wall of the cell. My companion knocked in reply—this was apparently one method of communication between the prisoners. We were also able to talk directly through the bars to three young women in a cell facing ours. We talked into the night and finally turned in around 2 a.m. I found it difficult to sleep in these new surroundings and with the light burning all night.

The prison was awake early, and there was activity outside our cell. A plate of warm porridge was served up at 7 a.m.

Around 10 a.m., I heard rhythmic shouts of what sounded like “take” and “pour,” accompanied by the splashing of water. The noise came from a yard beyond our cell, and to find out what the commotion meant I unfastened a window at the top of one of the cell walls and peered out. Up to 20 women were splashing themselves with water from a brick-built tank, supervised by a cane-wielding warder shouting the commands “take” and “pour.” At the command “take,” the women would scoop water from the tank and then splash themselves clean with it when the warder yelled “pour.”

As I watched that strange scene, I heard a loud voice behind me. “Who opened the window?” asked a warder.

I had unfastened the window by untying a piece of metal wire that secured its two handles and then sliding back a bolt. “I opened it,” I confessed.

“Who ordered you to do that?” the warder barked.

It was just a window, I protested. Where was the harm in opening it? But opening a window seemed to be a cardinal crime, for after again haranguing me the warder condemned me to be transferred to the prison’s “Death Row.”

I picked up my small pile of clothes, bid goodbye to my cellmate and the three inmates of the neighboring cell and followed a warder to my new, ominously named quarters.

Death Row was a brick building, divided by a narrow passageway lined by five small cells and two larger ones. As its chilling name implied, it housed prisoners sentenced to death. And now I was one of them.

I was assigned to one of the larger cells, which measured about 20 feet by 12 feet. About 10 women shared the cell, and they gave me a noisy welcome, showering me with questions. Within one week, all but two of them had been led away.

The cell in which I was to spend several months had a slop pail in one corner and a pot of drinking water in another. We shared three plates and two bamboo mats, surviving on a diet of boiled peas, spinach, sour soup, fried prawn paste and tamarind. When we were able to leave the cells and cross the yard to take a shower, we collected what vegetables and greens we could find to add some variety to our meals, using a knife fashioned from a hair clip to cut the meager produce.

Sometimes women who received food parcels from visiting family members shared out such treats as homemade curry, fish paste and fried vegetables. I noticed, however, that the parcels weren’t as big or as appetizing if they were brought in by husbands of the imprisoned women.

One woman inmate told me: “When men are imprisoned, their wives struggle to visit them, despite many difficulties. But when women are imprisoned, their husbands just try to be dutiful. They offer such excuses as caring for the children, household work and daily chores. Some husbands even take up with another woman.”

We had some freedom on Death Row—freedom to talk and argue among ourselves. And to pray. I still didn’t know how long I would have to serve in prison. And why Death Row? It was not a good omen.

There were worse places to be, however. one punishment cell was a dark, windowless place with a floor of wet sand. Four or five days in this dank, fetid hole were the punishment for violating prison regulations.

At night, we boosted spirits by singing. Some of the inmates knew the popular songs of performers like Zaw Win Hut and Hay Mar Ne Win, and they had good voices, too. I’m no singer, so I related some of the books I had read.

After four months, just as I was getting used to the routine on Death Row, my name was called and I was escorted to a jeep parked at the prison entrance. The jeep drove to another prison building, where two intelligence officers, two soldiers and a woman warder accompanied me inside. It was crowded with students, all waiting to appear before a prison court martial.

I can’t remember the details of the charges against me—only the sentence. Ten years. At least now the uncertainty was over. As the sun set on a hot summer day, I was led away to begin my prison term, not on Death Row but in a special ward for women prisoners.

Tha Zin was a political prisoner in Burma’s notorious Insein prison in the 1990s. She now lives in Rangoon

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My Nine Years in Hell
By Pho Thar Htoo
August 1, 2007

A former political prisoner’s story of unrelieved horror

When I began my sentence in Insein Prison in 1991 there were about 700 inmates. Before long, the number had swollen to 7,000. Convicted killers, drug traffickers, drug users, sex workers, vagrants, petty criminals, transgressors of local authority regulations—and political prisoners like myself.

Over time, and as Burma’s economic misery deepened, the number of women imprisoned for prostitution and drug offenses increased noticeably. It was sad to see how many of them were still little more than children.

Young or old, regardless of our offense and social background, we were condemned to a life stripped of pride, dignity and integrity, an unbroken existence of brutality, drudgery and filth. The days, weeks, months and years grew into what I called my “diary in hell.”

The women who suffered the most were those who should have received care and understanding— the pregnant prisoners.

I remember one day in March 1994, when a UN human rights commission was scheduled to visit the prison. We were roused at 6 a.m. and told to sit on benches to await the visitors. The hours passed, no visitors arrived, and we were finally discharged at lunch time.

For several hours we had been compelled to sit immobile on those hard benches, without even a toilet break. There were about half a dozen women among us in an advanced stage of pregnancy, and for them it was torture to remain like this, without any opportunity to relieve themselves.

One of the pregnant women in our group, Mya Win, fell unconscious. She was admitted to the prison hospital and died there from a urinary infection caused by the hours of sitting.

Other pregnant women died in prison because of inadequate and unskilled medical care and the lack of proper food. one woman who had just given birth was beaten for fetching water to clean herself and later died. Her baby also died for lack of milk or any other proper sustenance. The tiny corpse was placed in a plastic bag and taken away.

Child mortality was high, with TB and fever common causes of death. Children who had no one outside the prison to take care of them were allowed to stay with their mothers, but they lacked the most elementary health care and education. They slept on concrete floors, were allowed two bowls of water a day to clean themselves and were regularly beaten by tansees (prisoners assigned to supervise other prisoners).

Bribery was rampant. It was forbidden in theory to possess cash, but in practice money would buy special treatment from the warders—a simple bedstead, for instance, access at any time to washing facilities, food, a lighter work load.

The bribes were paid in several ways. They could be handed directly to the prison authorities during visits by family members, or the money could be smuggled by various routes into the prison. The discovery of one of these methods resulted in women prisoners being subjected to the most humiliating kind of search, truly a kind of rape. Infection and injuries were a common result of these searches.

One young woman imprisoned for not properly registering guests at her home pleaded in vain not to suffer the indignity and pain of a close body search, but she was beaten into submission.

Convicted sex workers suffered other humiliations. They were denied regular washing facilities, and they were given no change of clothes. When they were allowed to bathe they did so in the one longyi they possessed, washing it at the same time and then standing in the sun to dry it.

Many of these women had venereal diseases such as syphilis and gonorrhea. The prison had no HIV testing facility, and it was anyway usual to send women already diagnosed with the disease to labor camps.

There was never enough water to wash clothes, and the stench of disease, unwashed bodies and dirty clothing was sometimes overpowering. Women’s wards were avoided on the regular inspection rounds by prison administration officials because of the odor.

But if life in Insein Prison was bad, the routine in the labor camps is reputedly much worse. Women prisoners are put to work on such tasks as breaking stones under a burning sun and on minimum rations. They are allowed just two bowls of water a day to clean themselves after a day’s labor.

Those who die while at work are buried where they drop, in graves so shallow that the bodies of the dead aren’t safe from scavenging dogs. Even in death, the horror doesn’t cease.

Pho Thar Htoo, a former political prisoner in Insein Prison from 1991 to 1999, lives in exile
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