Living Silence in Burma (34 page)

Although family members were allowed to send food parcels to political prisoners, part of the food was usually taken by the prison authorities. U Hla Aye remembers that some of his cell-mates who had been in prison before didn’t even try to fight the situation. They simply told their families to divide the food into separate packages, with half for the prison wardens and half for themselves. Some prison wardens even went to prisoners’ cells just after visitors had left. U Hla Aye said: ‘They came with their dinner plate to ask for food. If you gave it to them willingly, you could have a quick extra cup [of water] on top of the five that you were allowed for bathing.’

The desire for communication is so strong that prisoners are willing to risk punishment in order to create a connection with other prisoners. U Hla Aye recalled that even if prisoners were put in solitary confinement,
they would try to communicate with those in neighbouring cells by knocking on the walls. At the very least, they tried to learn each other’s names and why they were there, even though they knew they would be severely beaten if they were caught.

Obtaining news from outside is also important to political prisoners, who are eager to keep abreast of current events. U Hla Aye said families and friends were sometimes able to send information in by wrapping food in pieces of newspaper. If someone was taken to the court, he would try to get news from his family there. Upon returning to his cell, he would pass on what he had learned to other prisoners.

When I asked how people maintained their political convictions under these circumstances, U Hla Aye said, ‘Each person has his own way of doing it. Some say to themselves, “I will never betray my work and my beliefs. I will never become a traitor.”’ Others, he said, relied on their loyalty to their colleagues, turned to religion, or focused on their hobbies. U Hla Aye tried to comfort himself by composing poems.

After U Hla Aye was released, he was eager to convey the bitterness of his prison experience and the thirst he had felt for freedom in his poetry, but he could not publish such poems in Burma. Poets and writers with anti-government backgrounds find that their work on even the most innocent subjects comes under intense scrutiny by the censorship board.

Life university

Tun Way had just graduated from high school when he was imprisoned in 1975. For him, prison really was his university, and he treated it as such. He had been a good student who often contributed articles to the school bulletin board, but after witnessing the military’s repression of the workers’ strike in Rangoon in 1974, he became politicized. The following year, he made posters and banners for the one-year anniversary demonstration. On 11 June 1975, he was arrested along with many others at Shwedagon Pagoda, where the strike committee had set up its headquarters. He was taken to an interrogation centre, and the torture began.

Tun Way said that the interrogators often alternated styles, treating him nicely and using persuasion and then beating him up without asking him anything particularly important. ‘Even if we sincerely did not know the answer,’ Tun Way said, ‘the authorities thought we were lying and used more brutal methods of torture.’ Fighting the exhaustion was also difficult. Tun Way remembered, ‘When the interrogators went out of the room, we tried to lean against the wall and take a nap because we were so sleepy after two or three days of non-stop interrogation. When they
came back into the room and saw that we were leaning against the wall and sleeping, they kicked us all over with their military boots.’

After ten days, Tun Way and about fifty other prisoners were sent to a building in the Criminal Investigation Department’s compound near Insein Prison. A military officer told them they were in a military tribunal and read out the charges against them, including threatening the state, violating the Insurgency Act, misusing public property and stealing.

During the demonstrations, students had burned coffins with the names of Ne Win and San Yu, a senior military general at the time, written on the side. Tun Way remembered: ‘We had requested the coffins from one man as a donation, but he was called as a witness during our trial. The officer asked him whether the students had taken the coffins by force. He said yes, so we were charged with robbing coffins from that man.’

Tun Way tried to come to terms with his imprisonment by telling himself that change never comes without sacrifice. While in prison he could do little to bring about change, but at least he could study. Despite constant bouts of skin diseases and other ailments, he and his university student cell-mates held frequent discussions on the political history of the country and why resistance was necessary.

For much of the time, Tun Way was held in a large cell with fifty other people, including politicians and lawyers. Although they were not allowed to read or write, some of the prisoners secretly managed to obtain articles from foreign magazines. In Tun Way’s cell, one of the older prisoners translated articles on foreign politics from
Time
magazine and explained them to the other inmates. Another gave a contextual analysis of the events presented in the articles. ‘Then free discussion followed,’ said Tun Way. ‘All had the right to speak, discuss and give different opinions.’

Tun Way was exposed to a variety of views through these discussions and revelled in the diversity. He also began to study English and modern Burmese poetry and to develop his talents as a poet. As time went on, he and his fellow inmates began to put together magazines in their cells. With no pens or pencils permitted, Tun Way and his friends had their visitors hide ink refills in food packages. They created makeshift pens by encasing the refills in two thin strips from their sleeping mats, held together with a rubber band. Tun Way became a member of the editorial group and collected articles from other inmates. Because they could write only at night, when they were not being watched, it took over a month to finish producing one issue. Once the publication was complete, prisoners would take turns reading it, secretly passing it from cell to cell.

Tun Way and his cell-mates also organized ceremonies to mark the
anniversaries of political strikes. Sometimes they held a hunger strike and spent the day in silence. On other occasions they sang political songs. Around the new year, they chanted
thangyat
, anti-government songs written for the occasion.

Tun Way found prison a good place to develop his intellect and create deep bonds of friendship. Having to share food, blankets and secrets for four or five years, he and some of his cell-mates became closer than siblings. But, he said, some prisoners could not endure the difficulties of prison life and resorted to informing on fellow inmates in return for a blanket or some small privilege. ‘The privilege would be quite small,’ he said, ‘but these people were happy to have it under such harsh living conditions.’

For Tun Way, family visits were especially emotional. He was overjoyed when a family member visited, because he could get food and obtain news about the rest of his family and friends. Prison visits were always on Sundays, so on Saturday night everyone would be happy and excited. On Sunday mornings, prisoners were called out in small groups for the brief visits. When his parents appeared for the first visit, they didn’t recognize him. He looked so different because of the torture he had undergone, the inadequate food and the fact that he was dressed in a prison uniform. ‘My mother started crying,’ he said. ‘Within the very short five-minute meeting, she could not speak a word; she just kept crying.’ Later, the prison authorities allowed the prisoners to wear civilian clothes during the visits. Tun Way, like other prisoners, borrowed a shirt,
longyi
and slippers from other prisoners. When he returned to his cell, he passed the set of nice clothes to someone else to wear. He said: ‘We wanted to make ourselves look as good as possible. Some even wore a jacket to look better.’

Being thrown in prison at such a young age, Tun Way matured quickly. He recalled: ‘Prison was like a university of life. In real universities, you have to spend four academic years to be a graduate. But for me I spent four years at life university.’ Tun Way realized that he needed to develop his knowledge while in prison, because after his release he would not be allowed to enrol in a formal educational institution. Moreover, he would not be treated like an ordinary person. He said: ‘People who are just released from prison are always one step behind and different from normal people. So it is important to study and learn, as well as to be confident.’

After his release, Tun Way became a poet, and in 1988 he joined the pro-democracy demonstrations. Now he is living outside Burma, and his poems are often featured on Burmese-language radio broadcasts from abroad.

Feelings of guilt

Many prisoners feel guilty about the trouble they have caused their families by taking up politics. Often they are the primary wage-earners. If they are students, they may have dashed their families’ hopes for their futures and even negatively affected their parents’ and siblings’ job opportunities. Once a member of the household is arrested, the whole family comes under increased surveillance and sometimes harassment. Some political prisoners feel so guilty that they encourage their wives or girlfriends to break up with them so that their lives will not also be destroyed. One political prisoner who felt this way wrote a song about it and sang it for me when I interviewed him several years later.

    
Released Maiden
A miserable wild night in a storm,
without a chance to meet a sunbeam.
There is still turbulent, heavy rain everywhere.
It is time for us to part.
Take this white scarf, darling,
as my gift to keep you company.
And tie up your loose hair with it.
Please try to comprehend
the meaning of my gift, a white scarf.
And encourage yourself
to pass through the sea of life.
Don’t worry for me.
My white scarf will help you
to tie up your loose hair.
Feel free and leave tenderly from my shore.
Feel free darling,
Feel free darling,
Leave tenderly from my shore.
¹⁵

During his many years in prison, this man’s girlfriend did end up going her own way. Although he is now free, everyone who gets close to him knows they may be putting themselves at risk.

Female prisoners

In the 1990s, there were more female political prisoners than ever before, as many young women took active roles in the 1988 demonstrations and the election campaign and then continued underground, organizing activities despite their parents’ objections. Particularly difficult
for younger female prisoners is the humiliation of being told by their interrogators that they are loose girls who are surely sleeping around with male colleagues.

One young woman, Kyi Kyi, had been a university student in 1988 and had participated enthusiastically in the 1990 election campaign. She spent a year in a rural area going from door to door explaining to villagers and townspeople what the BSPP had done wrong and what the NLD planned to do for the country. She returned to Rangoon at the time of the elections, but, after the junta ignored the election results, she continued working with a student group that was writing and distributing pamphlets about the political situation. In 1991, she was arrested. When she told me her story in 1998, her eyes were still bright, but there was a weariness about her that reflected what she had been through.

After her arrest, she was taken to an interrogation centre. She was not beaten, but the intelligence personnel taunted her and suggested she had had affairs with her male colleagues. She said: ‘For example, if I had gone to a meeting with a group of male friends, they would say something like, “You have the audacity to go with all these men when you’re the only girl? Your pluck is very commendable.”’ Her interrogators referred to her as
kaung ma
, a derogatory term for a woman. They said, ‘Hey,
kaung ma
, we’re asking you nicely because we don’t want to get physical. So you better just answer. You want us to beat you, don’t you? That’s the only way you would talk. You’re so cunning. You think so highly of yourself. Who do you think you are?’

When they asked her, blindfolded, whether she would continue to be involved in politics if they let her go, Kyi Kyi said she wasn’t doing politics. She was involved in the students’ movement and would continue to be. With that, a heavy object was slammed down next to her. She was asked, ‘What do you think that was? That was a gun. I can kill you right now if I want to.’

Letting her rest only for brief intervals between long periods of interrogation, the intelligence agents also tried to play her against other detainees. Kyi Kyi remembered: ‘They would say, “That
kaung ma
is revealing everything about you. Why do you keep covering for her?” And they would say the same thing about me to another person.’

Although Kyi Kyi says she did not reveal the names of her colleagues or their activities, in most cases prisoners cannot resist the torture inflicted on them and do confess. After they have been broken, prisoners are sometimes brought into a room with sacks over their heads and made to confess everything again, without knowing that their colleagues are sitting in front
of them. The political prisoners were depressed by such confessions, and some had difficulty keeping up their morale. But once in prison, fellow inmates tried to encourage each other so that they could survive.

When Kyi Kyi first arrived in prison, she said she was so afraid that she did not have the courage to look around. Exhausted from the days of interrogation, she slept almost constantly. Finally, other inmates urged her to get up and eat or her health would deteriorate. Sleeping on the cold cement floor, she, like others, soon developed high blood pressure. She had trouble eating the prison food, but other prisoners shared their food from home with her, helping her to keep her spirits up.

For Kyi Kyi, developing empathy and warmth towards other prisoners, political and criminal, was an important part of her prison experience. She explained how she became close to other prisoners after talking to them about their lives. ‘Those charged with murder told me why they felt they had to kill and the injustice done to them,’ she said.