Singapore: Myanmar security forces have subjected detainees to beatings with rifle butts, sexual violence, death and rape threats and even made them hold fake bombs to draw information from them, a new report reveals.
The south-east Asian nation has been in chaos since its armed forces seized power in February last year, locking up Myanmar’s elected leader Aung San Suu Kyi and embarking on a brutal campaign to suppress pro-democracy protesters and opponents who have taken up arms against them.
Insein prison in Yangon.Credit:Getty
The military junta is accused of myriad heinous acts, from torching villages to sniper attacks, and international condemnation was further elevated last week when state media announced the execution of four political prisoners, its first in more than three decades.
As regional foreign ministers including Australia’s Penny Wong converge on Phnom Penh, Cambodia, this week for a meeting in which Myanmar will be the central topic, Amnesty International has released new accounts of more savagery in the form of routine psychological and physical torture in the junta’s interrogation centres and prisons.
On top of more than 2100 people killed by security forces since the coup, almost 15,000 have been arrested and nearly 12,000 of them remain detained, according to activist group the Assistance Association for Political Prisoners.
Amnesty’s new report, based on interviews with former detainees and lawyers, documents enforced disappearances and other alleged rights abuses carried out at interrogation centres in the main cities of Yangon and Mandalay and at the notorious Insein Prison in Yangon.
A man in his 20s who told the Associated Press that he was beaten during an interrogation session last year.Credit:AP
They include claims of water torture, tasering of genitals and prisoners being slapped, kicked and hit with rifle butts, electrical wires and palm tree branches by jail officials. People were also allegedly threatened with death and rape and being cremated in the backyard of an interrogation centre in a bid to draw intelligence on the pro-democracy movement or elicit confessions.
In one instance reported by Amnesty, a person was handed a parcel by prison officers that contained a fake bomb while in other cases interrogators pointed guns at detainees’ chests or pushed weapons into their mouth, threatening to pull the trigger.
Anti-coup demonstrator Ma Kyu, who was arrested in Kayah state, in Myanmar’s east, told researchers a police officer had said to her: “We can just kill you after the arrest. We do not even need to put you in jail. We can simply shoot you.”
Ma Win, a protest group leader in Shan state said her little toe was cut with a saw when police arrested her on a bus. She was taken to Mandalay’s Obo Prison.
“They also used a stick to beat my back. All of them sounded drunk. I was threatened that I would be hit with the butt of the gun if I looked up.”
Junta leader Min Aung Hlaing announces an extension of the state of emergency in Myanmar on state television on Monday.Credit:MRTV
The Amnesty report also chronicles how people were not permitted to use the bathroom for several days while being interrogated and were provided food unsuitable for eating or no food or water at all.
There were also allegations of invasive body searches, harassment and humiliation of women and LGBTI detainees and, in the case of Obo Prison, CCTV cameras being placed in women’s showers and toilet cubicles, with the warden watching from the control room.
Describing an example of sexual violence, a woman quoted by Amnesty said: “One of my friends has a Nigerian boyfriend. When the interrogators found out, around five or six of them showed their male private parts to her. They asked her ‘Do you like only the foreigner’s private part better?’ They also asked her to be on all fours and hit her hip with cane sticks. They took photos of her while she was in that position.”
On Monday, Senior General Min Aung Hlaing, the leader of the ruling State Administration Council, as the junta calls itself, extended by six months the state of emergency he declared after last year’s military takeover.
He has said elections will be held next year but few believe it will be free or fair.
Announcing more time was needed to prepare for the polls, he said in a speech that the military had tried its “utmost to discharge [its] responsibilities” since it seized control.
“However, terrorists based inside and outside the country and the people and organisations supporting them are committed to the utter devastation of Myanmar, instead of trying to nurture democracy in Myanmar,” he said.
ASEAN has been unable to reign in the junta with a five-point plan unveiled 16 months ago.
Myanmar won’t have a delegate at the Cambodia meeting but United States Secretary of State Antony Blinken is due to attend.
China and Russia, who have been major arms suppliers to the Myanmar military, will also be represented, with their foreign ministers Wang Yi and Sergei Lavrov expected to be in Phnom Penh.
– with Reuters
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