Conditions in Insein Prison are very bad. But do statements like: "Last year media watchdog Reporters Without Borders said that poet Aung Than, a member of Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy, was probably infected with the HIV virus when he was forcibly injected in Insein prison hospital." help us get closer to truth?

[him] moderator

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Insein prison: Myanmar's 'silent killing field'
Sun, May 31, 2009
Agence France-Presse

BANGKOK, May 31, 2009 (AFP) - Described by inmates as a "hell" where beatings are common and disease is rife, Myanmar's Insein Prison, where Aung San Suu Kyi is on trial, is the brutal symbol of the ruling junta's repression.

The Nobel laureate has spent the past three weeks incarcerated in a so-called "guest house" at the jail on the outskirts of Yangon while her trial takes place behind closed doors at the notorious compound.

Her party has expressed concerns for her health after she suffered leg cramps in recent days while at the prison. The authorities say she is receiving medical care.

But if Aung San Suu Kyi has been kept in relatively bearable conditions at the prison - which was built by former colonial power Britain - for hundreds of other political prisoners it is the heart of Myanmar's darkness.

"It's like a hell where people really suffer. It's some kind of silent "killing field," - Bo Kyi, who spent seven years in the jail following a failed student uprising in 1988, told AFP.

Several political prisoners told of how they suffered bruising weeks-long interrogations at the hands of the junta's jailers at Insein.

Bo Kyi said during one round of questioning he was whipped with a rubber cord as he lay on his stomach and counted 150 lashes before he lost consciousness and awoke in a solitary cell.

He said he was then forced to assume different positions for hour-long periods while shackled in chains with a bar between his legs.

The heavily secured Insein is home to many of the 2,100 political prisoners which the United Nations says are held in Myanmar's prisons, often on spurious sentences of up to 60 years.

At least 139 political detainees have died in detention in the country since 1988, several of them in Insein, according to the Assistance Association for Political Prisoners of Burma (AAPPB), co-founded by Bo Kyi.

Details of conditions inside the secretive jail emerge mostly from former prisoners, although Tomas Okea Quintana, the UN Special Rapporteur on Myanmar, visited the prison for four hours in February and met five inmates.

He said after his visit that many detainees suffered from a lack of medical care during imprisonment.

Former prisoner Aung Myo Naing, who spent more than eight years there, said that each cell in Insein is 8 by 11 feet (2.5 by 3.5 metres), furnished with two bamboo mats and two uncovered toilet buckets.

"Insein Prison is a deadly torture camp," the 41-year-old said, describing one period of about 45 days when he was kept in solitary confinement and forbidden to read, write or bathe.

Past prisoners have described novel methods of communicating during these times, scratching messages to one another on cigarette filter papers and feeding them through holes in prison walls.

Inmates are given 15 minutes outside of the cell daily to shower, but they have no soap and no spare clothes to change into.

Many prisoners are starving - their rations of food consist of boiled water with a few sparse vegetables, fish paste and occasional rations of meat along with overcooked rice, while water is not purified.

The conditions mean that diseases such as tuberculosis and hepatitis B are rife, while joint pains, eyesight problems and mental illness are commonplace.

But access to a doctor is rare.

"They give you aspirins and another drug for sneezing, whatever illness you've got," said Aung Myo Thein, whose elder brother was also imprisoned and now suffers severe depression.

Due to dirty needles, medical treatment can itself be hazardous.

Last year media watchdog Reporters Without Borders said that poet Aung Than, a member of Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy, was probably infected with the HIV virus when he was forcibly injected in Insein prison hospital.

Many other prominent prisoners have been denied access to healthcare and have been moved since October 2008 to jails hundreds of miles from their families.

The International Committee of the Red Cross made its last visit to Insein Prison in November 2005, and two months later suspended its prison visits saying it could not fulfil its independent, impartial mandate.

http://news.asiaone.com/News/Latest%2BNews/Asia/Story/A1Story20090531-145075.html