Politicall Prisoners
By Win Naing Oo

Political prisoners have to stay together with criminals in the same halls where they are in a minority when compared with criminal prisoners. There are normally about 800 criminals and 200 political prisoners in a hall. Political prisoners are very dfferent from criminals in that they always group together and are united. They help and their opinion is same:

• They only obey what they consider as a group to be just and fair prison rules
• They share their food and possessions equally among one another; They assist, protect and take care of one another
• They all agree not to take any part in prisoner administration
• They all agree not to pay bribes to the authorities, even though most of the political prisoners are students and most of their families have good incomes
• They preserve, protect and care for the rights of other prisoners
• They avoid any act which will tarnish their political dignity.

7.1 Relations between political prisoners and criminal prisoners
Political prisoners have a good relationship with the ordinary criminals. They also help and take care of the criminal prisoners as much as they can. But political prisoners do not have a good relationship with senior criminal prisoners.

Ordinary criminals regard political prisoners as follows:

Prisoners who are jailed because of their endeavors in the interests of the whole population and the country, and not because they committed any crime; respectable people who are jailed for their refusal to accept injustice, their objection to unjust deeds or their stance on the side of the oppressed; and as people who try to protect the rights of prisoners as much as they can, help each other and keep the dignity of political prisoners by not taking special privileges or favours.

In spite of this respect for political prisoners, all criminals are afraid to stay near to political prisoners or have a close relationship with them.

The reason for this is that prison authorities have warned and intimidated the criminals not to associate closely with political prisoners.

The relationship between senior prisoners and political prisoners appears on the surface to be good, but it is not warm. In reality, there are almost always tensions under the surface, and sometimes this leads to direct confrontation. Senior criminal prisoners, like the prison authorities, also regard political prisoners as people who will destroy their interests and benefits and for this reason they dislike them.

Moreover, senior prisoners often intentionally create misunderstandmg, hatred and confrontation between political prisoners and prison allthorities, by giving false reports about political prisoners to prison allthorities, and spreading nimours against the political prisoners. The aim being both to put the political prisoners in more trouble, and to curry favour from the prison authorities. Because of these actions, the relationship between prison authorities and political prisoners becomes even more strained.

7.2 Two attitudes of prison authorities toward political prisoners
The views of prison authorities on criminal and political prisoners differ.

As the prison authorities consider that they can oppress the criminals however they want, there is no particular tension. The prison authorities bear no particular grudges against the criminal prisoners, like they do agamst political prisoners.

The first attitude that the prison authorities have toward political prisoners is one of hatred and ill-will. They have negative views about political prisoners, for the following reasons:

Political prisoners never agree with unjust deeds and harassment, and always object to any kind of ill-treatment.

Moreover, they submit protest letters to higher authorities with the help of people outside the prison; they also send protest letters to higher authorities concerning the corruption of prison authorities; they always demand their legal rights as prisoners; they take care of and protect each other They all respond umtedly and with one voice when one of them is insulted by prison authorities. The prison authorities strongly dislike prisoners uniting in this way.

This is why prison authorities hate political prisoners. They see them a hinderance to the smooth operating of the prison.

The second attitude the authorities have is that political prisoners are antigovernment elements, rebels and an enemy. So, in accordance with the wishes of the military rulers, the prison authorities harass and torture them whenever they get the chance.

Because of these two negative attitudes, the harassment, ill-treatment and torturing of political prisoners has become routine. The prison authorities always regard political prisoners with suspicion, and even their most simple and innocent requests are regarded as politically motivated or as attempts to break prison regulations.