Appendix 17

Arrest of a Politician
I was arrested soon after my participation in the 1996 December Student Demonstration. The authorities encircled my house at about 5 in the early evening of January 5, 1997. I was arrested by a group of authorities including the MI personnel, my quarter authorities, policemen and policewomen (about 15 people) at 9 in the evening. My house was also searched inch by inch and the searching was finished at about 3 in the morning. I was veiled and handcuffed when I was taken into a car.
At that time, nearly 200 activists were arrested, including about 10 female activists. The MI interrogated me. Maj. Sithu and Maj. Maung Maung Kyaw, son-in-law of Gen. Tin Oo who died in a helicopter crash, were the two chief officers responsible for the arrests and interrogations.
I was not beaten during the interrogation in Insein prison, but I was very tired because of the ten-day long interrogation. I was taken out from my cell and interrogated and put into the cell after the interrogation for ten days. I was not allowed to take a bath during the ten days. I heard that other female detainees were beaten and sexually harassed. While my female casemates, including me, were being questioned, the door was always opened and there were two female guards standing outside of the interrogation room. After the interrogation, I was separated from other female political prisoners and was put into the solitary confinement in the women’s cellblock in Insein prison.

Judicial System Under the Regime
I was put on trial on March 29, 1997. I was taken to the court six times. We were put on trial and accused by the Bureau of Special Investigation, BSI. I was sentenced on April 11, 1997. Normally, civil courts in Burma are closed at four in the afternoon. But the court we were brought to was not closed till nine in the evening.
During the trial, some of my replies were not recorded. For example, I was asked, “You participated in the movement of the funeral ceremony of the former Prime Minister U Nu, didn’t you?” and I refuted, “I only went to the funeral ceremony to pay respect the former Prime Minister of the Union of Burma. That was not recorded even though I demanded my refutation to be recorded. We did not have any chance to obtain our own lawyers and were not allowed our legal right to defend ourselves. Our families and friends were also not allowed to hear the trial at the court. All 26 casemates, including me, were not allowed to request appellations after the trial.
I was sentenced to 14 years in prison. The first 7-year imprisonment was under the Emergency Provision Act, Section 5 (J), and the second 7-year imprisonment was under Article 17/20, the Printers and Publishers’ Act.
We refused to recognize the court in which we were put on trial as a legal state court because there were no Union flags or photos of the state leaders. Therefore, we were banned from having family visits for two months. And so, we were not allowed family visits for the first six months of our arrests.

Experience in Insein Prison
During my six-month solitary confinement, the cell I lived in was very hot and did not have good ventilation. Even the small back window of my cell was closed with bricks so that I would be isolated. The iron net in front of my cell was covered with a curtain. I was only allowed to go outside once a day for a few minutes to take a bath. In this way, I was separated from other people for six months. I had to live on prison food. I was not allowed to communicate with other people and I did not have any contact with my family. But sometimes, I had a chance to meet two Chinese ladies imprisoned for kidnapping. We communicated using body language because they could not speak Burmese and I could not speak Chinese. Sometimes, I even talked to the walls around me.
One day, during my six-month solitary confinement, I suffered from a severe stomachache and I had to shout for help. The prison doctor came to me, examined me and ordered a female medic to give me an injection. During the injection, a female warden rushed in and shouted, “Stop the injection, the doctor said the medication he ordered was wrong.” This time, all the prison officers were nervous. They ordered and put another female prisoner medic to take care me into my cell.
In 1997, there was no hospital for women in Insein prison. The prison doctor demanded the director, Shwe Kyaw, send me to the prison hospital. I heard that the director agreed, but the prison superintendent, Lu Hla, did not agree about my hospitalization. I was injected with the wrong medication, but fortunately I did not suffer anything except that I could not sleep the whole night. I was worried at this time because I thought nobody would be informed if I died.
When my family visited me, they tried not to cry and so did I. I had expected the imprisonment as a politician in Burma. We were put into prison because of our political beliefs, and we always tried not to put our feelings in front of our beliefs. I was only allowed a family visit for 15 minutes. When I was on the way to my family visit, the prison authorities always ordered ordinary female prisoners to bow down because the authorities did not want ordinary prisoners to see us. But, we greeted ordinary prisoners secretly and gave them some snacks.
After 11 months in Insein prison, I was transferred to Tharawaddy prison. Insein prison was very crowded with political prisoners, and there were about 400 political prisoners, including 10 female political prisoners, transferred to remote prisons. Seeing the transfer scene, I felt and imagined about the Jewish prisoners in WWII, who were sent to concentration camps not knowing their whereabouts or their families’. Also, our transfer was before dawn in the winter and we wore white prisoner uniforms. Amongst the fog and blue police lock up vans, this scene was etched in my mind.

Experience in Tharawaddy Prison
I was transferred to Tharawaddy prison. I had heard about hell in Tharawaddy prison, but I had not believed and thought it had been exaggerated. In fact, I came to realize that the real condition was more than that. I experienced poisonous snakes coming into my cell. In that prison, I started experiencing mental sufferings I had never faced before. When we arrived at Tharawaddy prison, our food was seized and accused of being luxurious items, such as apples, juice, milk powder and so on. We had kept these items for our health. We were only allowed to have low quality food. Since then, we were in big trouble.
The rice we were offered in Tharawaddy was brownish red rice. It was very hard to eat and indigestible. Therefore, we could not bear it any more. We, ten female political prisoners transferred from Insein and one in Tharawaddy prior to us, met with and decided not to eat that rice any more. The ten female political prisoners who were transferred from Insein were Daw Ohn Myint, Ma Chu (Ma May Khaing), Thi Thi Aung, Nilar Thein, Moe Kalyar Oo, Lay Lay Mon, Thin Thin Aye, Ei Shwe Zin, Aye Aye Moe and I.
Two of us decided to eat the rice. These two prisoners were allowed to take a bath. The other female political prisoners who refused to have the rice were not allowed to go out, to take a bath and also our cellblock was enclosed and separated. Therefore, five of us started eating nothing, a hunger strike. We informed the authorities that we would be on the hunger strike until they changed the rice. We also demanded that the prison authorities offer us fried fish once a week because we had been offered boiled fish once a week.
We were not allowed to take a bath, but fortunately Thi Thi Aung was allowed a family visit during the hunger strike. She secretly informed her family about our strike and the news about our strike was on the air by the BBC soon after.
Therefore, our strike was victorious in a very short time. The Directors of Prison Department, the MI personnel and prison authorities arrived, talked with us and eventually changed the rice. Every prisoner was offered fried fish once a week. That was the triumph of our three-day long strike.
Besides the low quality of the food, we were offered two cups of water for drinking, cleaning and washing because of the lack of water when the electricity was out.
When there was enough water, the prison authorities ordered the disease infected ordinary prisoners to take a bath before us. They used their cups for both eating and taking a bath that the water was very dirty. The female officer purposefully ordered us to take a bath after these prisoners. We took a bath for the purpose of cleaning, but we had to use dirty water so that we could not clean ourselves. Therefore, we could not stand it any more and firmly complained to the prison doctor and the prison authorities. Finally, we were allowed to take a bath before the ordinary prisoners.
There was a big misfortune for us in Tharawaddy prison. I had started noticing a peephole on the wall near our bathing place since August 1999. I informed a female warden about that peephole, but she replied, “Yes, there had been a hole before.”
I was in doubt so I watched while my casemates were taking a bath. We were being seen via that hole during our bathing. When I reported this, Nilar Thein got on the wall and she caught a man red-handed. I was very angry because that was real harassment for us. The whole cellblock exploded about this insult. We demanded the superintendent of the prison inform his superiors, and also to punish the person who did this insult. The man was a warden, Aung Zaw. As a matter of fact, he was not the only one who committed this act. Later, we came to know that we had been seen for several months. Three months after this incident, our bathing place was covered after the ICRC visit.

Release
Having spent five years and eight months in prison, I was released on September 5, 2002. I was released under Article 401(1) of the Criminal Procedure Code.
After the release, I tried to restart my education, Master of Science, the final part 2. I tried to get MI clearance on the demand of my professor. But the Student Department of the MI replied to me that they would keep an eye on my future activities.
Soon after, I informed the ICRC, the media and organizations abroad about the maltreatment to a political prisoner in Tharawaddy prison, Ko Htay Kywel. The MI traced my information. The situation became unsafe for me, as I talked about the prison conditions a lot since my release.
The regime tried to restart the National Convention. The political climate of Burma became very tense. I did not trust that convention. I could be rearrested at any time because I was released under the Article 401(1). I did not want to live in prison again while I took part in political movements in one way or another. Also, it was very hard to get a job for a former political prisoner. My life in Burma was similar to the prison. The difference was whether I was behind the prison iron bars or not. I wanted to free myself, and finally I headed to the Thai-Burma border.

Supporting the Political Prisoners
Since 1990, we did vending to support the political prisoners at every Water Festival. We, Aye Aye Moe and I, who is now on the Thai-Burma border, some comrades still inside Burma and Zaw Min, still in Thayet prison even though he completed his sentenced, met and agreed to do something to provide support to political prisoners, and fundraised since then. The authorities tried to harm us with the Municipal Act. We kept on selling. And with that money, we started supporting, as much as we could, the prisoners in Taungoo, Mandalay, Insein and Tharawaddy prisons in May 1990.
Since then, we supported political prisoners every year by vending during the Water Festival. We, Tate Naing, Bo Kyi, Aung Din, Kyaw Kyaw Thein, Ye Maw Htoo and Tin Hlaing, who are now abroad and Ko Key, Ko Ye and Ye Kyaw Swar, still inside Burma, tried to support the political prisoners every year. Many people who took part in this supporting movement were arrested every year.

Participating in Political Movements
I started participating in political movements in 1988. I took my duties in the Security and Principle Subcommittee of the All Burma Federation of Student Unions, ABFSU, set up in August 1988. After the coup and the political parties and organizations were allowed to set up, the Kyauktadar township office of the Democratic Party for New Society was set up at my house. On the opening day, regional authorities and the MI pressured my family not to open the office.
Before the 1990 election, I was traveling with the party members of the Patriot Party of Student and Youth to the villages in Minbu Township in Magwe Division for a 20-day long party campaign trip. On this trip, we organized people to take part in politics not for the party vote but for the election results and the political movements towards a Democratic country.
Daw Aung San Suu Kyi won the Nobel Peace prize in 1991. Many students, including Moe Kalyar Oo and I, organized other students to take part in a demonstration to support and hail the Nobel Peace laureate. We demonstrated on the award day, December 10, 1991. Moe Kalyar got on the roof and made a convincing speech for other students to participate. At about one in the afternoon, the troops enclosed the university campus. The authorities ordered students to leave, showing student identities one by one, but the students refused to do this and tried leave the campus group by group. We did win finally. We kept on demonstrating until the next day, December 11. We went out to the Pyay Avenue Road and made speeches. The authorities came to my house to arrest me in the evening, but I escaped in time so that I was not arrested.
I was also involved in the Funeral Ceremony of the former Prime Minister U Nu on February 20, 1995. The MI tried to arrest me again. I had to evade arrest for nearly five months. Even though I was not arrested, I was declared a fugitive and sentenced to 7 years in prison without trial by the Northern District Special Court of Rangoon on April 28.
I took part in the 1996 December Student Demonstration as well.