Sai Zaw Thaike, a Myanmar Now photojournalist currently serving a long prison sentence for his reporting, has been denied adequate treatment for serious medical conditions, according to sources inside Yangon’s Insein Prison, where he is being held.
He is suffering from severe kidney disease and hemorrhoids and is in urgent need of major surgery, the sources said. However, prison authorities have refused to allow him access to treatment either in the prison hospital or at an external medical facility.
Prison authorities have opted to treat him only with oral medication, but it is unclear whether the required medicines are even available inside the prison, the sources added.
Myanmar Now has attempted to contact prison authorities for comment regarding Sai Zaw Thaike’s condition, but has not received a response.
Sai Zaw Thaike was arrested by the military in Sittwe while reporting on the devastation caused by Cyclone Mocha in Rakhine State in May 2023. He was later sentenced to 20 years in prison.
He was charged under Article 27 of the Natural Disaster Management Law, Section 66d of the Telecommunications Law, and Sections 505a and 124a of the colonial-era Penal Code for sedition and high treason. He was tried in a military court and sentenced without being given the opportunity to defend himself.
On Wednesday, activists took part in a protest in front of the junta-controlled Myanmar embassy in Bangkok, Thailand, calling for Sai Zaw Thaike’s immediate and unconditional release.
The human rights activists also submitted an open letter to the embassy, signed by 3,008 people, demanding the journalist’s release, according to the organiser of the protest, Amnesty International Thailand.
At the protest, activists wore traditional Myanmar clothing and applied thanaka, a paste made from tree bark, on their faces as an expression of solidarity with the people of Myanmar who are being oppressed under military rule.
Protesters carried placards declaring that “gathering information for reporting is not a crime” alongside others displaying images of camera to emphasise their point.
According to the Assistance Association for Political Prisoners, more than 30,000 people have been arrested since the military coup on February 1, 2021. Of these, more than 14,328 people remain behind bars.
In the five years since the coup, 274 political prisoners have died in custody due to inadequate healthcare, torture, executions, and natural disasters, according to data collected by the Myanmar Prison Witness and the Political Prisoners Network Myanmar (PPNM). Among them, 139 deaths were due to lack of proper medical care.
Prisoners are routinely denied timely medical care due to a lack of doctors in prisons, and those requiring transfer to outside medical facilities are often delayed, resulting in deaths, according to PPNM officer Thaik Tun Oo.
“Even though major prisons have their own hospitals, they face shortages of doctors and medicines. Many political prisoners have died while waiting for treatment,” he said.
