What are the conditions like in the prisons? Are prisoners subjected to torture and ill-treatment?
Conditions in Burmese jails are dreadful. For political prisoners, ill-treatment and torture are commonplace. Punishments include being forced into stress positions, beatings, and isolation in cramped and dark cells, otherwise known as “dog cells.” Food and medical treatment are often poor or nonexistent. In many cases prisoners have to pay for these basic services themselves. Some of the detainees sentenced in late 2008 have been transferred to isolated prisons in rugged inhospitable areas of Burma. This makes it more difficult for families or lawyers to visit them and to inform the international community on their welfare. For Burmese political activists, time in prison does not only represent physical and mental punishment and estrangement from their loved ones. It comes with the knowledge that through long jail terms in isolated places the military is trying to make them irrelevant to Burma and forgotten by the outside world. Is there any chance that Burma’s military government wil
Conditions in Burmese jails are dreadful. For political prisoners, ill-treatment and torture are commonplace. Punishments include being forced into stress positions, beatings, and isolation in cramped and dark cells, otherwise known as “dog cells.” Food and medical treatment are often poor or nonexistent. In many cases prisoners have to pay for these basic services themselves. Many prisoners face severe health problems, such as the ethnic Shan political leader Hkun Tun Oo is reportedly seriously ill in prison, six years into a 96-year prison term. Some of the detainees sentenced in late 2008 have been transferred to isolated prisons in rugged inhospitable areas of Burma. This makes it more difficult for families or lawyers to visit them and to inform the international community on their welfare. For Burmese political activists, time in prison does not only represent physical and mental punishment and estrangement from their loved ones. It comes with the knowledge that through long jail
Related Questions
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- What are the conditions like in the prisons? Are prisoners subjected to torture and ill-treatment?
