Kyaw Win

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…