Ex-Inmates Describe Torture In Burma

In August 1989, Myo Myint was arrested and sent to Insein Prison. The following year, inmates there went on a hunger strike, demanding that political prisoners be released. The jailers broke the strike. Myo Myint recalled that they forced him to lie facedown for more than seven hours while they stood on his remaining arm and leg, beating him with a wooden rod.

Other times they made him squat on his one good leg for four hours a day, blindfolded.

The prisoners called the tiny, darkened isolation cell at Insein the "military dog cell," Myo Myint recalled during an interview in Mae Sot, a Thai town on the Burmese border. Once, he said, he was left in that cell for a month. He could not see anything, only the hand of the prison guard passing him a stale portion of fish paste.

"You didn't know if it was day or night," he said.

Another time, he recalled, he was stripped, blindfolded and forced to perch on a four-foot-high stool, handcuffed to the seat. Then the guards kicked it out from under him, punching him and beating him on the back and hips with canes.

What sustained him throughout his three terms in prison over nearly 15 years, he said, was his belief that one day Burma's internal strife would end. "Many people made sacrifices," he said. "I myself, I lost my leg. Many people lost their parents, their children. . . . Only having reconciliation and a democratic government, that is what I wanted."

Upon his second release, in 1997, he set out to support those who were still inside. Using his prison contacts, he smuggled food and letters into the jail. Within one month, he was caught and taken to a military intelligence center. There, he said, he was starved and beaten until he suffered rectal bleeding.

Myo Myint was released for the final time in May 2004 and again resumed his underground efforts. But every two days, an intelligence officer would visit his home, warning him to stop, he said. Last March, after he was interrogated for an entire day and threatened with arrest yet again, Myo Myint decided it was time to leave. He used his old military ID card to slip across the border into Thailand. He now works in Mae Sot for the Assistance Association for Political Prisoners, documenting the number of political prisoners still behind bars.

A report issued last month by the assistance association said the type of abuse experienced by Min Ko Naing and Myo Myint is widespread. Based on interviews with 24 former political prisoners, the report said torture is used to "break down" political activists and instill fear in the public.

At night, Myo Myint said, he still wakes up sweating and shaking. It could be a dog barking that jars him from sleep. It could be a memory. The images of tortured prisoners haunt him.

"I know exactly how they feel, how they suffer," he said. "As long as they are behind bars, I cannot ignore that. So I work for them."

Nakashima reported from Mae Sot, Thailand.