Burma’s Reforms Leave Forgotten Political Prisoners

From THE IRRAWADDY By TODD PITMAN / AP WRITER| May 10, 2012

RANGOON—In a remote prison in northwest Burma, Aye Aung wakes up each day as he has for nearly 14 years—alone in a dark cell on a wooden plank, a prisoner of conscience all but forgotten by the world. For hours, the former student activist meditates and reads the books his father brings from afar every other month. But mostly, he lives in the mind-numbing boredom of captivity. Now 36, he has never seen a cell phone, never surfed the Internet, never married or had children. Although Burma’s military-backed government has released hundreds of well-known dissidents over the past year as part of a startling series of reforms that have earned it lavish praise and an easing of sanctions, rights advocates say hundreds more remain wrongfully locked away—their cases in danger of being forgotten amid rising hope for a more open, democratic nation. “If this government is really changing, why have they not freed my son?” asked his mother, San Myint, as tears slid down her cheeks during an interview in the former capital. “He’s done nothing wrong,” the visibly shaken 66-year-old told The Associated Press at her home, where one wall is adorned with a prominent picture of a youthful Aye Aung smiling broadly as he plays guitar beside a friend. “It’s cruel and unfair. We just want him to come home.” Aye Aung’s troubles began in late 1998, when he was arrested and sentenced months later to a 59-year prison term for his role in a pro-democracy student movement. He had distributed pamphlets and participated in a rare public protest, both of which were deemed by authorities a threat to state security. His sentence has since been halved, but he still must serve around 15 more years. Until then, he remains incarcerated in the Kalay prison of Burma’s distant northwest, a three-day bus ride from his family’s Rangoon home. His parents say he suffers from stomach problems and sporadic bouts of malaria, and medical treatment in the prison is poor. Burma, meanwhile, is moving on. Global investors are lining up to do business. Tourists are arriving in droves. Foreign dignitaries jet in every few days to discuss a brighter future. UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon urged Western nations during a visit this month to ease sanctions further and boost aid. Win Mra, who heads a government-appointed National Human Rights Commission appointed last year, said he has made some attempt to get remaining prisoners on the agenda, but acknowledged it’s not a government priority. “If there are prisoners of conscience remaining, yes, they should be released,” Win Mra said. “But it’s a moot point right now because there are so many other things happening.” According to a count by Human Rights Watch, President Thein Sein’s administration freed at least 659 political prisoners over the past year. They included well-known student activists, Buddhist monks who rose up in 1988 and 2007, journalists and ethnic minority leaders. Since then, however, the issue has largely been dropped because, after the last amnesty on Jan. 13., “the Home Ministry stated clearly that they freed all of them,” Win Mra said. That any political prisoners were released at all is significant because Burma’s leaders traditionally have denied they exist. The government argues that the accused broke laws threatening security or national stability; rights groups say many were wrongfully convicted and given extreme sentences for actions that would not even be considered crimes elsewhere. Getting more prisoners released is difficult because many of those remaining in jail are accused of “committing serious crimes—bombings, terrorist activities,” Win Mra added. “It’s pretty complicated.” In a rare joint statement last week, Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch (HRW) called for a UN-backed panel to investigate remaining inmates believed jailed for political reasons. The government hasn’t responded. “Without a proper legal review process, how can anybody be sure” those now in jail were not wrongfully convicted? said David Mathieson, a veteran researcher for HRW. “It’s obscene that many Western countries are blithely dropping sanctions when there is unfinished business on the political prisoner issue to attend to,” he said. Like the plight of Aye Aung, another case crying out for review is that of Thant Zaw, a one-time youth activist imprisoned in 1989 for an alleged bomb attack. Thant Zaw denied involvement, but was beaten and sentenced to death in what Mathieson called “one of the most brutally farcical legal proceedings” in Burma’s history. The actual bomber confessed to the crime, served time and already has been released, Mathieson said. Min Ko Naing, a leader of a 1988 student movement who was himself released in January, said Thant Zaw and other inmates may still be in prison because authorities “just don’t want to admit they made a mistake.” But he also said the government was using prisoners as “bargaining chips”—releasing some to prove progress, holding others to push the West to ease more sanctions. Many also suffer from anonymity. Nobody knows the exact number. The Thailand-based Assistance Association for Political Prisoners group has detailed 471 cases, and is trying to verify hundreds more. European Union foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton recently put the number between 200 and 600. San Myint said she and her husband recently found an older list of prisoners of conscience drawn up by opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi’s party that was delivered to the government last year. Their son was left out—perhaps by error or ignorance—and many of those on it were freed. They made sure their son appears on the opposition’s newly compiled list of 280 names.

Released 300 Political Prisoners on Jan 13, 2012

Source from AAPPB Website

http://www.aappb.org/Update_List_of_Political_Prisoners_Released_on_13_Jan_%202012.pdf

LIVE: Burma prisoner amnesty – monk Gambira free

By DVB
Published: 13 January 2012
LIVE: Burma prisoner amnesty – monk Gambira free thumbnail
Prominent monk Ashin Gambira reportedly freed
We will be keeping you updated with breaking news as the day progresses. Updates in Rangoon time (+6.30 GMT). Confirmation hard to get, so note when labelled rumour

10.30am: The Voice magazine says Min Ko Naing was released at 10am (Rangoon time) today, along with 26 other political prisoners from Thayet.

10.25am: Confirmed that 88 Generation activists Zaw Htwe, Jimmy and Mya Aye are among those release from Taunggyi prison, according to Zaw Htwe’s wife. Still not clear if Min Ko Naing and Ko Ko Gyi are free, although we got a tip-off that Min Ko Naing’s family is en route to meet him.

10.20am: Comedian Zarganar writes on Facebook that jailed monk U Gambira, who had been severely tortured in prison, has been released.

10.16am: Rumours that leading 88 Generation activists, including Min Ko Naing and Ko Ko Gyi, will be released. Reuters quoteed from an official at Thayet prison saying Min Ko Naing will walk.

10.10am: Second DVB reporter U Zeya, father of Sithu Zeya, has already been released, according to reports from inside Burma. More details soon

09.50am: The 21-year-old DVB reporter Sithu Zeya was among the first political prisoners to be released today. He was given an 18-year jail term for videoing the aftermath of the April 2010 grenade attacks in Rangoon. Sithu Zeya had been forced to reveal under torture that his father was also a DVB journalist.

Sithu today walked from Henzada prison and will be reunited with his family.

Myanmar to free more prisoners on Monday: Officials

The Sunday Times
YANGON (AFP) - Myanmar is to declare a new prisoner amnesty on Monday that will include political detainees, government officials in the military-dominated country said on Sunday.

'Some prisoners will be released on Monday,' an official who did not wish to be named told AFP, without giving further details.

Another official added that 'some prisoners of conscience from prisons outside Yangon' would be among those freed.

The regime pardoned about 200 political prisoners in a much-anticipated amnesty in October but critics said the gesture did not go far enough as most of the country's political detainees are still locked up.

How Burma Can Prove It Has Changed Its Ways

Fred Hiatt, The Jakarta Globe: November 8, 2011

Life in the new Burma: Fifteen political prisoners who embarked on a hunger strike to protest their confinement have been denied water as punishment. Eight of them, according to Amnesty International, have been sent to cells built for dogs, which have no light, no mats or bedding and insufficient space for humans to stand.

In the past year, more than 100,000 ethnic minorities have been forced to leave their homes by brutal army tactics, including gang rapes.

U Gambira, a Buddhist monk serving 63 years in prison for his role in a peaceful 2007 movement for democracy, is rapidly deteriorating, according to Amnesty International, the Assistance Association for Political Prisoners (Burma) and his elder sister, Ma Khin Thu Htay. The monk, 32, apparently has not recovered from being tortured in 2009 and is being given narcotic injections to silence him rather than appropriate medical care.

None of this would have been surprising in the past, because Burma, a nation of 50 million or so in Southeast Asia, has long been ruled by one of the world’s most brutal regimes (which calls its country Myanmar). But in recent months, there have been signs of change and, along with those, arguments in the West about how to respond.

Longtime opponents of pro-democracy sanctions have urged a rapid easing of those. The International Crisis Group, for example, in September proclaimed a “major reform underway:” “President Thein Sein has moved rapidly to begin implementing an ambitious reform agenda ... strong signs of heralding a new kind of political leadership in Myanmar ... a completely different tone for governance.”

Among the changes: Aung San Suu Kyi, leader of Burma’s foremost pro-democracy political party, has been freed from house arrest and allowed to meet with diplomats and Burmese leaders. Her photograph has emerged in many Rangoon homes from its hiding place beneath mattresses or between book pages. Her party, now banned, may be permitted to reregister.

Domestic media remain strictly controlled, but Internet access has been eased. A dam construction project, which would have displaced thousands, has been suspended.

That decision not only cheered Burma’s beleaguered environmentalists but also angered neighboring China, which was helping finance the project and would have received almost all of the electricity generated. That, in turn, suggests that Burma’s leaders, like those of other countries in the region, are chafing under China’s increasingly peremptory attitude toward its near-abroad. Chinese businessmen in Burma buy property, claim natural resources and export young girls to become forced brides in Chinese villages.

Indeed, a leading argument against sanctions has been the opening they would give China to a strategically located, resource-rich country. Now it seems the sanctions — and Burma’s desire for someone to play a counterbalancing role — may be one factor swaying the regime toward the pro-reform steps it knows the West will insist on.

If that’s the case, the logical response is assurance that true reform will lead to Western engagement — but no premature removal of the incentives for change.

How to define premature? There is no single yardstick. But one basic requirement would be freedom for all political prisoners (1,700 or so), including the 120 suffering from severe health problems — among them U Gambira.

Four years ago, while he was on the run inside his country, the monk published an op-ed on this page in which he “welcomed the strong actions of the United States to impose financial and travel restrictions on the regime and its enablers.”

“Burma’s Saffron Revolution is just beginning,” U Gambira bravely wrote. “The regime’s use of mass arrests, murder, torture and imprisonment has failed to extinguish our desire for the freedom that was stolen from us so many years ago. We have taken their best punch.”

The regime set out to prove him wrong. According to his sister, he was beaten on the head with a stick “every 15 minutes for the entire month of April 2009.”

“He was beaten in this manner for requesting permission to walk for his health,” she wrote in a recent letter to Burma’s president. “While he was being beaten, his hands were placed behind his back and handcuffed, and he was forced to wear iron shackles. In addition, he was hooded with a black cloth bag and pieces of cloth were forcefully put in his mouth ... he was fed meals with a spoon by prison guards . . . and [had to] urinate or defecate on the chair.”

The new Burma regime is, perhaps, not responsible for the crimes of May 2009. But one would think that a “completely different tone for governance” will include freedom for the dictatorship’s most damaged victims and an end to its most appalling crimes.

Fred Hiatt is the editorial pages editor of The Washington Post.

Invitation for the Seminar