18 December, 2003

The international community has been criticizing the military
regime for many years about the unfair detention of Burmese
democratic activists. In its resolutions on Burma every year, the
General Assembly of the United Nations has urged the regime to
immediately and unconditionally release all political detainees.
Nevertheless the regime not only ignored all the appeals but also
continued detaining political prisoners and making new arrests of
Burmese democratic activists.

Although the regime is shouting out that it is working cooperatively
with the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) and
continuing the release of political prisoners, in actual fact there
remains over 1500 political prisoners in prisons of Burma, suffering
physically and psychologically. Under the deficient health care
systems inside prisons, the death toll of the long-term imprisoned,
aged and ailing political prisoners has been at least 84 from 1988
to date.

Recently, on 12 December, 2003, a political prisoner named Saw
Sar Htoo Saw from Karen National Union (KNU) died from
Tuberculosis in Insein Prison Hospital. He is one of the KNU
members who were arrested and sentenced to the death penalty in
1983 and thus has passed his last 20 years in prison. Many other
Karen and Rakhine ethnic political prisoners, who like him, were
arrested and detained during the period of the Burma Socialist
Programme Party (BSPP) regime, have been detained in prisons
continually throughout the changes of regime, from BSPP to the
State Law and Order Restoration Council (SLORC) and then to
State Peace and Development Council (SPDC).

The regime usually makes arrests using their preferred "laws that
are in effect". However, concerning the release or remission of
political prisoners, it prefers to act illicitly. The regime has
successively issued amnesty orders in 1989, 1992, 1993 and 1997
respectively but all the above-mentioned ethnic political prisoners
including Saw Sar Htoo Saw were disregarded from most of these
orders except once, in 1989, when their death penalties were
substituted with life sentences. Under these orders, other criminal
prisoners were released or offered relevant remissions but, for the
mentioned political prisoners, the military intelligence ordered the
prison department to continue their detentions.

It is clear that these deaths in custody are the result of the unjust
arrests of the military regime, detention by imposing long-term
imprisonments and, at worst, the intentional negligence of the
health conditions of political prisoners, thus breaking fundamental
human rights in prisons. Although it does not officially proclaim that
political prisoners exist, and are being detained, the regime utilizes
the release of common law prisoners for propagating as if they
were political prisoners. However, in truth, political prisoners are
the long term imprisoned, the aged and the ailing, who do not get
released and news of their deaths is frequently heard of, either in
custody, or at home not long after their release. This highlights
the truth that the regime utilizes the status of ICRC for political
advantage, and bragging that it has been working cooperatively
with the ICRC, an international organization.

Analyzing the development of Burmese politics clearly indicates the
disgraceful actions of the regime; arrests of democratic activists
since 1988 to date; constantly trying to abolish the 1990 election
result; total ignorance of the resolutions and appeals of UN and
international community; several menacing tactics, of repression
and restriction, employed on Daw Aung San Suu Kyi and the
National League for Democracy (NLD). Despite the regime making
ceasefire agreements with ethnic armed groups, claiming that it is
making confidence building with the NLD, propagating to the
foreign media that it did allow all Burmese citizens the participation
in the process of national politics, it has completely ignored the
appeal of all parties concerning the release of political prisoners in
Burma.

Therefore we hereby report to the Burmese people as well as to
the international community that we strongly condemn the military
regime for its crime of torturing political prisoners both physically
and psychologically that leads to deaths in custody.

Assistance Association for Political Prisoners (Burma)