NLD MP UNDER ARREST AND ESCAPED MONK DISCLOSES

Police took 64-year-old Ohn Kyaing from his home Wednesday evening, said Nyan Win, the spokesman for Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy.
"The reason why he was detained was not known," Nyan Win said.
Ohn Kyaing was released from prison in 2005 after serving 15 years of a 17-year prison sentence for "writing and distributing seditious pamphlets" and threatening state security.
Ohn Kyaing joined the NLD after a long career in journalism and won a parliamentary seat in 1990 _ elections that were overwhelmingly won by Suu Kyi's party but which the military junta refused to recognize.
Until then, he had worked at several newspapers and written articles under the pen name "Aung Wint."
Ohn Kyaing is a close friend and former colleague of Win Tin, another former journalist turned opposition politician, who was the longest-serving political prisoner in Myanmar until his release Sept. 23. Win Tin served 19 years behind bars.
Asked to comment on the detention of Ohn Kyaing, Win Tin said, it "is not unusual and something we have to expect. He is a close colleague, a good friend and a highly qualified man."
The Home Ministry, which is in charge of police, could not be reached for comment Thursday. Authorities seldom comment on arrests of this nature.
Myanmar has been under military rule for 46 years and is one of the world's poorest and most authoritarian nations. Suu Kyi, a Nobel Peace Prize laureate, has been detained for 13 of the last 19 years.

ESCAPED MONK DISCLOSES HIS STRUGGLE

“I was badly tortured during interrogation [by] agents from military security affairs [formerly military intelligence], and special branch police and conventional police,” Ashin Panna Siri told RFA’s Burmese service.“I was forced to do squatting and stand on one foot while answering questions. When I couldn’t answer or the answer was unsatisfactory, I was punched in the head, face, and ribs. My toes were stepped on by boots,” he said.“The military security agent was worst. He kicked my face with boots and also kicked my chest. He said he wouldn’t care if he was dismissed for using violent methods. He also put his pistol on table and threatened me.”On Sept. 15, Ashin Panna Siri said, he scaled two barbed-wire fences to flee the camp—one of them 10 feet high and one 15 feet high. He declined to disclose any details of his flight to India.“I climbed over both fences. My hands and arms were torn and lacerated by the barbed wire. But I didn’t care,” he said.Hard laborEven monks handed only brief sentences for their roles in the 2007 uprising were sent to hard labor camps, a punishment usually reserved for those handed longer terms, he said.“Conditions in these camps are far worse than in proper prisons. The food is horrible. Rice mixed with stones and sometimes with rat feces. There was almost no proper medical care and inmates had to do very hard labor,” he said.“Our feet were chained. We had to work from 7 a.m. to 11 a.m., and then from 1 p.m. to 4 or 5 p.m. We had only Sundays off. It was very hard labor. We had to bring timber logs and carry them on our shoulders. We had to dig ditches, pound gravel, and mend roads,” Ashin Panna Siri said.While he was initially detained from Oct. 18-24 in police station #1 in Monywa, he said, “High-level military officials—I believe they were the divisional commander and deputy commander—visited quite often and closely supervised my questioning to get information from me. They asked my interrogators in front of me, ‘What is the situation now? What information did we get? Get it from him by any means!’”Ashin Panna Siri was convicted Jan. 18, 2008 of possessing foreign currency, which he acknowledges having at the time of his arrest. “The reason they didn’t charge me with political acts is that they want to deny that there are any political prisoners in Burma,” he said.Ashin Panna Siri hid with U Gambira after the crackdown, in which dozens were killed and thousands arrested. Arrested on Oct. 18, 2007, he spent seven months in Kalay prison before he was convicted and sent to hard labor.