Corruption in the Prison
By Win Naing Oo

The following are the usual complaints in the prison:

1. If a prisoner does not want to sit in the standard position while he is in the model cells, he will be beaten and will have to pay at least a thousand Kyat to prison authorities as a fine. (see also section 2.1)

2. A prisoner has to pay some money to the Akhan Lu Gyi of the hall if he wants to have a good sleeping place when he reaches the cell after being sentenced.

3. A prisoner has to pay further money to jail officials if he wants to avoid beatings by senior prisoners. If he pays this money, he will be regarded as close to the prison authorities and will not suffer regular beatings.

In one case, a prisoner who was related with a famous ruby-smuggling case is said to have paid 100,000 Kyat to the head prisoner of the hall, Aung Gyi. This case became well-know and Aung Gyi was transferred to another place, a hard labor camnp at Somprabon in Kachin State as a punishment.

4. A prisoner has to pay some money to a responsible person if he wants to get a good position in the jail, such as helping as a worker in the detention office, jail office, office of the main jail, office of hall supervisor, food store, or if he wants to become an Akhan Lu Gyi or a clerk in the hall. (These places have no strict regulations and prisoners who work there have a special chance to obtain some money. To get these positions, prisoners must pay 5,000-10,000 Kyat to prison officials.)

There are workshops in the prison for such things as carpentry, shoe-making, and cloth-weaving, where prisoners are forced to work. To avoid having to provide labor (including having to plant vegetables), a prisoner has to pay some money to prison officials. Other prisoners are forced to work for extremely long hours in such workshops.

5. Every prisoner is afraid of being sent to a hard labour camp in a remote area. Labour camps are the places where prisoners receive the harshest treatment because of the severity of the work load, the ruthlessness of the officials, malnutrition, poor accommodation, improper medical care and the remoteness of the forest locations where malaria and dysentery are common. Every prisoner considers it to be the same as being sent to their death. If they do not want to go there, they have to pay from 3,000 Kyat to 5,000 Kyat to prison officials.

The majority of prisoners who cannot pay bribes to prison officers are sent to Kyauk Gyi hard labour camp, where they must break rocks. This place is infamous for its high death tolls of prisoners. Due to extreme fatigue and constant torture, some prisoners have committed suicide, by jumping from the top of the mountain. In 1991 there was an outbreak of gastrointestinal disease in that camp, but no medicine was provided and dozens of prisoners died. The dead bodies were buried in a mass grave on the spot.

Among the hard labour camps, some are better than others. The better camps include pig-breeding camps, the Rangoon-Mandalay Expressway construction camp and Min Gon camp. In Min Gon camp, some entertainment such as videos is provided for the prisoners. If a prisoner wants to stay in one of these camps, since all prisoners are required to go and work at a labour camp, they have to pay 10,000 Kyat or more to prison authorities.

6. If a prisoner smuggles money into the prison, he has to pay a commission to the warder. Then he has to give more of the money to the warder in order to obtain food, medicines and other commodities.

7. According to the jail manual, prisoners who are patients in the hospital can receive milk and eggs for breakfast and soup and meat for lunch and dinner. However, if a prisoner has no money, it is impossible to get these special meals because they are unable to give any kind of bribe to the prison authorities. As mentioned above (section 2.2), the prisoners who can offer 3,000-5,000 Kyat monthly to prison doctors are all allowed to stay in the prison hospital as if they are patients and are treated like real patients.