A woman held in Lashio Prison, northern Shan State, on terrorism charges has not received treatment for head and spinal injuries inflicted during her interrogation, a released former fellow inmate told Myanmar Now last week.
The political prisoner, now 29, was arrested in April 2021 and accused of participating in an attack carried out in Lashio using explosives. The military subjected her to questioning for a week and reportedly tortured her at the Northeastern Military Command’s Interrogation Centre No. 57.
She was charged under sections 50i and 50c of the Anti-Terrorism Law and Section 505a of the Penal Code—on incitement—then handed an eight-year prison sentence in December 2021, eight months after her initial incarceration.
The name of the injured prisoner, who is still detained, could not be disclosed out of concern for her safety.
According to the recently released political prisoner, another woman in her 20s who shared a cell with the injured woman said she vomited blood and lost consciousness after repeated blows to the head during her interrogation. She remained in critical condition for more than a week afterwards.
“She couldn’t even sit upright for long. There was a bump on her head and when she overexerted herself mentally she became nauseous and vomited blood,” said the former political prisoner, who requested anonymity.
The former cellmate added that when the victim first arrived at the prison, she vomited blood at least three times a month, after which she was unable to eat properly for a week at a time.
“They beat her badly at the interrogation centre. The right side of her spine was even misaligned. She would start getting migraines in the right side of her head and then start vomiting everywhere,” the source said.
“It really pained me to see her like that without any way to help. We tried to tell the authorities but they just dismissed it as ‘a cough’ and went away,” she added.
Although she appealed to Kyaw Shwe, the prison superintendent, and other authorities for additional medical attention for the injured prisoner, the request was denied until the end of 2022. Prison authorities then only allowed the victim an X-ray at the Lashio General Hospital after a new superintendent was promoted to the job in early 2023.
“They only let her out for one X-ray, and even when the X-ray showed that her spine was misaligned, the authorities said that it was because she was sitting down too much and didn’t allow her to go back for neuroimaging,” the former inmate said.
She added that prison authorities had lately only given the injured prisoner painkillers, and that her family in Yangon was having difficulties sending care packages to her.
Another former political prisoner, released from Lashio Prison in early May, said the victim’s condition had not changed by the time she was released.
Of more than 2,000 detainees released throughout Myanmar in a mass amnesty on May 3, following a meeting between military regime officials and the Chinese foreign affairs minister, 13 were released from Lashio Prison.
Most of the released prisoners had protested the coup of 2021 and were serving two-year terms for incitement, which they had nearly completed at the time of the amnesty.
According to data maintained by the monitoring group Assistance Association for Political Prisoners, as of June 5 a total of 23,228 people have been arrested in Myanmar since the coup, of whom 18,901 are still detained and 6,257 have been sentenced.
