- In-Depth
‘Skeletons covered in skin’: inside Myanmar’s labour camps
An investigation by Myanmar Now reveals for the first time an account of the horrors that unfolded within the gulag-like prison compounds from those who helped to oversee them.
- News
Despite calls for reform, prisoners continue hard labour in shackles
Months after a report on abuses and corruption in prison labour camps prompted calls for reforms and investigations, little has changed.
- Politics
Second suspect arrested in case of Ko Ni’s killing
A second suspect has been arrested in connection with the high-profile assassination of Ko Ni, a top legal adviser for the ruling National League for Democracy (NLD) party, Burma’s President’s Office announced Friday night. The man, named Aung Win Zaw, 46, is accused of being an accomplice of Kyi Linn, who was arrested after allegedly shooting dead Ko Ni at close range with a pistol in the compound of Rangoon International Airport on Sunday evening. Police apprehended Aung Win Zaw on a bridge over the Salween River in Karen State at 4:20 p.m. on Monday, but his arrest had not been announced until now. Police arrested Kyi Linn, 53, outside the airport compound within minutes of the killing. Police officers and a former fellow prisoner have told Myanmar Now that two suspects had committed crimes together in the past and served lengthy prison sentences in Obo Prison in Mandalay for smuggling Buddha statues to neighbouring countries. They were released in a presidential amnesty in 2014, the sources said. Kyi Linn also served an earlier sentence for the same crime in the late 1980s. Aung Soe, 51, a former fellow inmate at Obo Prison, had told a Myanmar Now reporter on Monday evening — a…
- News
TV show depicts ‘progress’ in Burma’s prisons
Burma’s Ministry of Home Affairs and commercial television channel SkyNet have cooperated to launch a weekly programme that shows how conditions in the country’s notorious prison system are supposedly improving. The 30-minute programme, titled “Rays of Lights That Impact,” was first broadcast Monday on SkyNet’s Home Channel, one of several local channels produced by SkyNet, which also runs dozens of international channels. The show featured lengthy interviews with prison department officers, who explained that prison conditions had improved in recent years and how vocational programmes and Buddhist meditation courses were preparing prisoners for a life beyond the walls. “We organise activities for the prisoners, related with religious practices, health and education, sports and entertainment,” Maung Maung Aye, the director of the Yangon Region Correctional Department, told SkyNet. “We provide vocational training to prisoners so that they are ready to make a living after they are released.” A few minutes were reserved for actual footage from inside Rangoon’s Insein Prison and brief interviews with three female prisoners. Thin Kyaw, an official of the SkyNet Home Channel, said the channel has an actual contract with the Home Affairs Ministry — which is run by the military — obliging it to run daily programmes about activities of the ministry’s various…
- In-Depth
Life with hard labour
Under the glare of the midday sun, several dozen men wearing blue outfits, with shackles around their ankles, stood grouped together in a field of shrubs and tall grass. One man among them, holding a long bamboo cane, started to shout at the thin-looking prisoners and they began to use hoes and spades to clear the thick vegetation. “One, two, three, four!” he yelled rhythmically, setting a quick pace for the work. Nearby, a stocky prison warder was looking on with a rifle slung over his shoulder and an umbrella to shield him from the blazing sun. The convicts were from Kaung Hmu Labour Camp and were seen in June as they cleared a piece of wasteland along the Mandalay-Lashio Road in Shan State for the expansion of a sugarcane plantation. The man barking orders was a prisoner appointed to be a so-called prison management assistant, who acts as an enforcer and by doing so can avoid labour. These men – also called “stick-holders” in Burmese – not only use violence to deal with dissent, former prisoners said, but also flog labourers into working harder. “The stick-holders would beat us at will. We worked at the front and they beat…