Living Silence in Burma (35 page)

    The prostitutes too described their experiences to me. Their lives were absolutely pitiful. When we asked them why they decided to become prostitutes, the main reason was that they didn’t know how to make a living any other way. For some, their lives were destroyed. They didn’t have any money and their parents too were helpless. They were uneducated. They said to us: ‘How else could we make a living? We don’t know how to do anything.’

Kyi Kyi said that the sex workers and some of the other female criminal prisoners hoped that one day the activists could bring about changes that would make their lives better. For that reason, they sometimes helped the political prisoners.

Still, Kyi Kyi found it hard to overcome the physical difficulties of prison life. At one point, she was housed in a building that was divided into ten cells, all of which were infested with mice and rats. At night, the inmates would awaken to rats biting their hands and feet, and, even when they were eating, the mice would sometimes steal their food. Finally the authorities agreed to renovate the building because of the threat of plague. The prisoners were moved to another building, where they met up with other political prisoners and began doing physical exercises together. Accusing the women of engaging in military training, the prison authorities sent them back to their former cells before the walls were dry. The overwhelming chemical vapours caused many of the prisoners to become ill.

Kyi Kyi and her cell-mates were allowed to walk outside for only fifteen minutes a day, and they could use only two or three cups of water per
day for showering. Kyi Kyi recalled: ‘As for washing clothes, we [political prisoners] had to use second-hand water already used by those who had given bribes. This was a kind of torture. They didn’t severely limit water because it was expensive. It was done on purpose.’ Like the male prisoners, female prisoners were not allowed any pens, pencils or books, even about religion. But Kyi Kyi crafted writing implements to write poetry, and she and her cell-mates often sang at night to pass the time. On the anniversaries of important days, the female political prisoners would wear white, make little wreaths out of twigs and flowers, and float them in the prison drainage ditch. Although the prisoners had to do this surreptitiously, Kyi Kyi said, they experienced a feeling of gratification at being able to make the secret gesture.

A couple of times a month, the female prisoners gathered together to share their food, discuss politics and analyse each other’s behaviour. During Kyi Kyi’s first two years of imprisonment, she was housed with about fifty female political prisoners in one common area, and they would break into groups of seven or eight for the sessions. Later, when there were fewer political prisoners, Kyi Kyi said they held the discussions more often. Although the female political prisoners generally tried to live within the prison rules, some criminal prisoners invented complaints and reported on them to the authorities. Their numbers reduced, the political prisoners were less able to stand up to abusive guards. Thus, Kyi Kyi recalled, ‘people were becoming increasingly depressed and tensions were building. So these discussions were necessary as a means to boost morale and encourage each other.’

As time went on, Kyi Kyi herself struggled with the emotional difficulties of prison life. She began to smoke and isolated herself from others. She was disillusioned by some of the other political prisoners, who had turned on their comrades, and she began to lose faith in the movement. But when she stared out of the window and saw the child prostitutes lined up for their meals, she said her determination to continue the struggle returned. She recalled: ‘The girls were only about thirteen or fourteen years old and wearing little skirts. I felt the utmost pity for them.’ She also observed hunched-over old women who had been arrested for selling snacks on the street without a permit. Seeing such people imprisoned made her angry, an emotion that helped her maintain her commitment during the last three years of her imprisonment.

After Kyi Kyi’s release, as described in
Chapter 6
, she continued to be hounded by military intelligence and even her family became increasingly suspicious of her.

Covert assistance

Moe Aye was arrested in 1990. Like Kyi Kyi, he had been involved in the 1990 election campaign and continued to work with politically active student groups when the election results were not honoured. After being tortured in an interrogation centre for two months, he was sent to Insein Prison. There he and his colleagues, with the secret help of some prison authorities, were able to set up elaborate systems for studying.
¹⁶

At first, he said, the political activists were divided by their ideologies, but eventually they were able to overcome these differences and accept that, regardless of which organization they originally came from, they now belonged to only one category, that of political prisoners. Incarcerated with Buddhist monks as well as Protestant pastors who had been part of a failed Karen insurrection in the Irrawaddy Delta in 1991, the student prisoners had a chance to study Buddhism and Christianity. Drawing on their collective talents, the prisoners also set up study groups for English, Burmese history and even Japanese. All the studying had to be done covertly, for if they were caught, they would be severely punished and sometimes put in isolation cells. But the prisoners were not deterred. They created sheets out of plastic bags used to deliver food and wrote on those with pointed implements. By holding the piece of plastic up to the light, the scratches could be read.

Moe Aye lived in a row of cell blocks with four political prisoners in each cell. During bathing time, one person would forfeit his bath to hurry to the cell of an older political prisoner, who would write out five or ten English vocabulary words with translations in Burmese. After a couple of months, the student prisoners moved on to grammar. If they didn’t understand what was written, the next day one would use his bathing time to get an explanation. Then the lessons would be sent on to the next cell. Moe Aye recalled: ‘For over one year, we studied by plastic. After that, we knew how to approach the warden.’

Moe Aye and several of the other inmates came up with a plan to sell the coffee mix and milk powder their families gave them in return for study materials. They started off by asking the warden to bring them an issue of
Time
magazine, which could be purchased on Pansodan Road in central Rangoon. The prisoners offered to pay the warden five times the actual price for smuggling the magazine in. The warden agreed and secretly carried in a few folded-up pages at a time. It took twenty days to get the whole magazine.

Moe Aye wanted to translate the articles into Burmese for others to read, but it was too difficult to do so on plastic. So he and his friends
collected more coffee and milk powder and again paid the warden the equivalent of five times the actual price for bringing in a notebook, page by page, and a pencil. Then Moe Aye began translating, selecting particular articles about regional politics as well as essays and opinion pieces. Although Moe Aye knew more English than his cell-mates, he was not fluent. Thus, they decided they needed a dictionary and began saving their milk powder for that as well. Moe Aye recalled: ‘All students were trying very hard to study English. If the SLORC gave the right to study, it would be very good. But as you know, they never gave that right. They sent us to prison because they wanted to close our eyes and our ears.’
¹⁷

In 1992, Moe Aye and his friends managed to get information about the American presidential election from a recently released friend, who obtained newsletters and election materials from the American embassy. They were eager to learn about the American election system, and although they weren’t sure how Democrats and Republicans differed, Moe Aye said they were hopeful that whoever won would support the democratic movement in Burma.

Moe Aye and his friends also developed a knocking system for communicating from cell to cell during times when the prisoners were ordered to remain silent. Because the Burmese alphabet has many more letters and vowels than English, they decided to use English. One tap equalled A, two taps equalled B, and so on. To decode a sentence from the next cell, one person would count the number of taps while another would translate the numbers into letters and words. The usefulness of this communication system only increased the prisoners’ desire to study English.

Moe Aye explained how during one less restrictive period, political discussions were held almost every night in his block of cells. To come up with the discussion topic, one person per cell would forgo his bath to consult with the inmates in the other cells. By the time all of the cells had been let out in turn for their baths, the inmates would have agreed on a specific topic. In the afternoons, cell-mates would quietly discuss the topic in their cells. Late at night, after the guards had retired, one spokesman per cell would state his cell-mates’ views on the topic. Each cell would take a turn. If intelligence personnel showed up to carry out a surprise check, a code would be knocked from wall to wall, and everyone would fall silent. The prisoners knew that if the authorities found out about such talks, the instigators would be punished and transferred to another part of the prison.

During these dialogues, older politicians would sometimes challenge the younger inmates’ interpretations of historical events. The younger
inmates had gained their knowledge from books written by the government and did not know what had really happened, for instance, during the 1974/75 workers’ strikes. Some of the prisoners were old communists, and the younger prisoners would ask them to tell of their experiences with the Communist Party in the jungle. On those nights, everyone would listen quietly as one of the elder men shared his recollections.

Moe Aye said that during the less tense periods he and his friends were so busy studying English and politics that they were almost happy. ‘Sometimes’, he said, ‘we forgot our mothers and our family.’ But whenever there was a crackdown and no one could talk or study, it was not so easy. Moe Aye said: ‘On those nights we asked each other, “Hey, don’t you miss your mother?” And others would answer wistfully, “Yes, I miss my mother.”’

Moe Aye explained that some of the prison authorities shared the students’ frustrations with military rule but, like others in Burma, they did not dare to openly express their discontent for fear of losing their jobs. As a half-measure, a few tried to help the political prisoners in small ways.

In one case, the prisoners banded together to demand the right to read the newspaper, threatening a hunger strike if their demand was not granted. One of the senior prison authorities became worried and called some of the prisoners to his office. He said: ‘Please understand my situation. I can do nothing. I understand you, because my son and daughter are students. If you want the newspaper, please request it of the MI office.’ But the intelligence personnel refused the request, telling the prisoners that if they initiated a hunger strike, they would be beaten.

Later, that senior prison officer often walked by the student prisoners’ cells chewing betel nut. The first time he offered betel nut to them, they didn’t know what to say, because it was not allowed in prison. But then Moe Aye thought he was trying to convey something, so he accepted the offer. When the prison officer handed over the betel nut, it was wrapped in a page of newspaper. Similarly, when Aung San Suu Kyi was released from house arrest in 1995, a sympathetic prison warden gleefully brought the news to Moe Aye and his cell-mates. In other instances, some of the usually tight-lipped wardens came to the political prisoners’ cells when they were drunk to complain about the military regime.

Most of the prison authorities were not particularly interested in human rights, but some were angry with the regime because they had been passed over for promotion. Like other civil servants, they resented having to serve under retired military officers who were less educated
than themselves. Moe Aye said he and his colleagues tried to convince such wardens that their situation would not improve until democracy was achieved.

Improvements and setbacks

In 1999, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) negotiated an agreement with the regime, granting it access to all of Burma’s prisons. Besides meeting with prisoners and investigating prison conditions, the ICRC also gave money to needy political prisoners’ families so they could make prison visits. The ICRC regularly met with Burmese authorities and sought to improve prison conditions. As a result, the cement floors of jail cells were covered with wood and prisoners were granted longer periods of time out of their cells. The ICRC also provided assistance for improving the water supply at some prisons and donated good-quality medicine for prisoners with serious medical conditions.
¹⁸
Former prisoners claim, however, that much of this medicine never made it into the prisoners’ hands, or that they had to pay money to the prison authorities to obtain it.
¹⁹

According to the Burmese Jail Manual, prisoners have the right to read books and to write letters to their families once every two weeks, but these rights were denied for many years. Since the early 2000s, prisoners have been allowed to read religious books and some news publications, and they can write letters home once every two weeks if their families cannot visit them. Families can also send money orders, allowing prisoners to buy food from prison commissaries. These rights have been gained owing to a combination of factors, including prisoners’ repeated demands, the ICRC’s discussions with the authorities, the UN Special Rapporteur’s attention to prison conditions, and greater reporting on the situation in prisons by AAPP, Burmese media in exile and international human rights organizations.
²⁰
UN human rights bodies and several foreign governments also raised the issue of political prisoners and prison conditions repeatedly.