The Asian Human Rights Commission (AHRC) has urged the international community to mount pressure on Burma’s ruling junta to allow the International Committee of the Red Cross to resume visits to detention centres, where widespread torture and abuses have been reported.
The Hong Kong-based, Rights group, in a statement on Thursday said maximum efforts are needed to renew the mandate of the ICRC in getting access to detention centres across Burma without delay, as some detainees have been tortured during interrogation.
“The physical and mental injuries caused in this period were either not adequately treated or not treated at all during the detainees' incarceration, causing some of them lifelong damage,” AHRC said.
AHRC’s call came following the release of about 120 political prisoners, as part of the Burmese military regime’s amnesty granted to 7,114 prisoners, on humanitarian grounds. The AHRC’s statement was supported by several political prisoners, who are among those released.
Myo Yan Naung Thein, a student activist, who was arrested in September 2007 and released as part of the amnesty told Mizzima he was severely beaten while questioning and was insulted.
“I was blind folded and was taken somewhere. As soon as I reached the interrogation centre, they all started kicking me,” he said.
A former Rangoon Technological Institute (RIT) student, Myo Yan Naung Thein, was released from Sittwe Prison, and is currently unable to walk properly as a result of lack of adequate treatment in prison.
“I was kept in a closed dark room. Sometimes, the prison authorities slapped and tortured me without asking any questions. But sometimes they questioned me the whole night without giving me any food,” he recalle.
He said, he was often tied behind and was given electric shocks.
Similarly, Katty Aung, a pregnant woman arrested for her husband Tun Tun’s involvement in September 2007 protests and sentenced to 25 years in prison, said she suffered a miscarriage after being detained and suffered heart attacks, but did not receive adequate treatment.
“When I was arrested, I was pregnant. But because of low blood pressure and insufficient food, I had a miscarriage,” she said.
AHRC said cases of ill-treatment and torture in the prisons across Burma are rampant but the situation has deteriorated after a halt to ICRC’s prison visits in 2005.
According to the Assistance Association for Political Prisoners-Burma (AAPP-B), there are at least 2200 political prisoners including Nobel Peace Laureate Aung San Suu Kyi in Burma.
AHRC said the renewal of ICRC’s prison visits, would be “a practical and quickly-implementable step to reduce the incidence of abuse and ameliorate some of its worst consequences.”
“If then this much cannot be done, what good can be said of the release of a few thousand shattered bodies, while tens of thousands more continue to have the same type of abuses heaped upon them daily?,” asked the group.
The ICRC carried out regular visits to detainees in prisons and labour camps from 1999 to the end of 2005 but suspended it when members of the junta-backed civil organisation –the Union Solidarity and Development Association - insisted on accompanying them in their prison visits, which is against the ICRC’s internationally-recognized conditions.
At present, the ICRC continues to support family visits to detainees and works to enhance the effectiveness of the Myanmar Red Cross Society.
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