Prison staff and police are conducting a desperate search for seven men who escaped from a labour camp north of the junta’s capital Naypyitaw on Tuesday, according to police sources.
The prisoners escaped from the Kin Thar (2) labour camp, located near the village of Kin Thar in Tatkon Township, late Tuesday evening, the sources said.
Tatkon Township is part of the Naypyitaw Union Territory and is about a one-hour drive north of the capital. The camp, which is on the road from Tatkon to Pinlaung and Pekon in southern Shan State, is in a mountainous and heavily-wooded area.
It is also near several military facilities, including a tank unit, a weapons factory, and a military-run medical research centre.
According to a police cable obtained by Myanmar Now, the fugitives are aged 20-35 and each have between three and six years remaining on sentences that they are serving for offences ranging from theft and drug trafficking to rape and murder.
More than 60 junta personnel are involved in the effort to recapture the fugitives, who apparently fled together at around 7pm on Tuesday, the cable said.
“I still haven’t heard anything about them being caught yet,” a source close to the Naypyitaw police force said late Wednesday.
Kin Thar (2) is a hard labour camp that also houses the families of prison staff.
Myanmar’s labour camps are notorious for their rampant human rights abuses. Even at the height of the Covid-19 pandemic, prisoners were forced to toil in quarries and perform other difficult and dangerous work.
Not all of the prisoners at the camps are hardened criminals. Since the military seized power in February 2021, it has also transferred many of its political opponents to labour camps.
According to a Prison Department report submitted to the Pyidaungsu Hluttaw, or Union Parliament, in 2018, there are a total of 48 prisons and 48 labour camps in Myanmar. The report also stated that more than 5,000 prisoners had died in labour camps between 1978 and 2014.
In May 2018, some MPs in the then civilian government led by the National League for Democracy called for reforms to the country’s labour camps to conform with international human rights standards. However, no concrete plan was ever formulated.
