A political prisoner discovers a suffering greater than his own, as he learns the real reason behind the massive use of forced labor in Burma.
By Zin Linn
“The generals were extremely angry with the masses for demanding democracy. As retaliation, they decided to ‘re-educate’ the people once and for all. They were determined to suppress the democratic soul forever. What they wanted was nothing less than total revenge against their own people.”
These remarks, made by a former high-ranking police officer, were almost unbelievably shocking to me, even though I, as a political prisoner in Burma’s notorious Insein prison, had already experienced the generals’ brutality firsthand.
The year was 1996. I was serving a seven-year sentence under Section 5 (J) of the 1950 Emergency Provisions Act. For years, I had been held in solitary confinement in Cellblock 5, Cell 10. Then, one day in September, seven gentlemen unexpectedly appeared in Cellblock 5. Suddenly, my years of isolation of isolation came to an end, as one of them was put into Cell 10 with me.
This was completely contrary to the standard practice of keeping political prisoners apart from other inmates. Under normal circumstances, the authorities would never think of putting newcomers in with prisoners of conscience, as it was feared that we would “infect” them with our thoughts. But these men were no ordinary prisoners: They were high-ranking police officers.
One of them was U Tin Maung Nyo, my new cellmate , who had served as the deputy-director of the Central Intelligence Department (CID) for Rangoon Division. Another was U Kyaw Paing, a former infantry major who had once served as a personal assistant to the Interior Minister; at the time of his arrest, he was in charge of the police force in Rangoon’s Yankin Township. Another, U Htin Kyaw, was a thirty-year veteran of the police force. U Kyaw Htin was a senior officer in the CID. U Shwe Oo, an ex-army captain, was in charge of the Pabedan Township police force in downtown Rangoon. U Tun Lin served as a senior officer in the Bureau of Special Intelligence. And U Aung San Myint was the police-station master in Pabedan Township.
How did men of such standing end up in prison? According to their accounts, they were luckless pawns in a power struggle between the ruling junta’s Secretary-1, Lt-Gen Khin Nyunt, and Secretary-2, Lt-Gen Tin Oo. They said that they belonged to S-2’s group, and that during a struggle for decision-making positions, they had fallen into a trap set by their rivals.
They explained that the S-1 group had orchestrated a crackdown on a brothel that serviced the top brass. The Military Intelligence Services (MIS), under the direction of Lt-Gen Khin Nyunt, “persuaded” the proprietor, Tin Maung Lwin (a.k.a. Lin Maung Thet), to state in court that the seven police officers regularly took bribes from him. In fact, he had never seen any of these men before. But Tin Maung Lwin’s testimony was enough to earn each of these men a seven-year prison sentence. This, very briefly, is how they found themselves in our company.
This remarkable story was not the only thing that excited our attention at that time. We political prisoners, who often received information from sympathetic wardens, learned that there was an incessant turnover of ordinary prisoners. By our calculations, 1,200-1,500 new prisoners were entering the prison each day, while at least 1,000 a week were being transferred to prison labor camps. As many as 5,000 were being shipped out each month, but the total prison population never dropped below 12,000. What was going on?
The wardens informed us that every day at dusk, each of the more than 40 townships in Rangoon was required to send around 30 detainees to Insein Prison. Within a week or two, each of these prisoners would be “tried” and automatically receive a sentence ranging from six months to three years. Prisoners were warned that if they protested, their sentence would be doubled. The judge also told them that top generals had made the decision to punish them, so they would understood that it was futile to appeal to justice.
Unlike our new cellmates, the overwhelming majority of these new prisoners were drawn from Rangoon’s vast underclass. They were typically held under Articles 54 or 13 (d) of the Criminal Code. Article 54 permits the authorities to detain persons on suspicion of committing a crime, while 13 (d) allows for the detention of those who are caught hiding under the cover of darkness.
Eventually, we came to understand the significance of these mass arrests. In order to build roads, bridges, railways, airports, dams, irrigation canals, and even pagodas, the junta relies heavily on forced labor. To meet the demand for workers, law enforcement officials and the courts, under the direction of the junta, conspired to round up members of the lower classes and send them to labor camps. Ironically, the junta undertook many of these infrastructure projects to demonstrate to the international community that it was ruling Burma in a noble-minded manner. The generals didn’t seem to realize that their use of citizens as slaves would meet with condemnation from the rest of the world.
As Burmese, the use of forced labor was nothing new to us, although it was disturbing to witness this system at work on such a massive scale. What did come as a shock was the insight into this phenomenon that we gained from talking with the former senior police officers who had so recently become our fellow inmates.
Three of these men had once been close to the Interior Minister, so they were in a good position to understand the inner workings of the junta’s cabinet. My fellow political prisoners and I asked them many questions concerning this issue, and received excellent answers. On one occasion, I had an opportunity to ask my cellmate about the motivation behind this systematic exploitation of the poorest members of Burmese society. It was then that I received the shocking reply that has stayed with me ever since. It was, in fact, so unbelievable to me that I made an effort to speak to the other former police officers to confirm whether what my cellmate had said was true or not. They all told me exactly the same story.
At one cabinet meeting, they explained, the junta came to the conclusion that the 1988 democracy movement derived its greatest support from the poorest members of society. This was why, soon after they had successfully suppressed the people’s uprising, they forcibly relocated many of the poor—particularly those from areas that were most active during the struggle to end military rule—to the so-called “new townships” on the outskirts of Rangoon and other cities. But this did not satisfy the country's new rulers, who also devised a “re-education” scheme that involved arresting many of the poor on the slimmest of pretexts, and forcing them into prisons and labor camps. There, their jailors taunted them, explaining that this was their chance to “taste democracy”.
We learned much about conditions at these labor camps through other prisoners. Min Khin was a prisoner who had escaped from the Taungzun quarry site near the Sittaung Bridge, on the border between Pegu Divison and Mon State. After he was recaptured, he was put in shackles and sent to Insein, where he told us about his experiences at this infamous labor camp.
Min Khin recalled that the prisoners awoke every day at 4 a.m. and began work no later than an hour later. There were eleven units at the Taungzun camp, each with about 120 prisoners. Every day, each unit lost at least one prisoner to starvation, exhaustion, illness or mistreatment. Prisoners who were too sick to work were often taken behind nearby bushes and killed. Many others, unable to bear the crushing labor and brutal persecution any longer, committed suicide by throwing themselves under passing lorries or over cliffs. Thus the first event of the day was a mass burial of dead prisoners. After this and a breakfast that consisted of a mug of plain boiled rice, the workday began, usually lasting until 9 p.m.
The enormous death toll at Taungzun never came under investigation, because the administrator of the camp, Thein Tun, never failed to bribe the relevant authorities, including the Home Minister. He could easily afford to do this, because every day he forced his prisoners to quarry double the daily quota of 25,00 tonnes per unit. This surplus was sold to private contractors, giving Thein Tun an income of two million kyat a day.
Every day, the mountain at Taungzun was dynamited to produce huge masses of rock. The prisoners hammered the rocks into small pieces and carried them by hand to railway carriages for transport to construction sites. Prisoners were never allowed to slow down, and were permitted to urinate just once a day. To maintain this grueling routine, Thein Tun had a loyal assistant, known to the wardens and prisoners as Dah Tint Swe, who persecuted the prisoners mercilessly. “Dah” is the Burmese word for a sort of dagger. It was with this weapon that Dah Tint Swe murdered anyone under his supervision who failed to keep up with the pace demanded by Thein Tun.
The worst thing, according to Min Khin, is that prisoners at labor camps are forced to wear iron shackles, reducing them to the level of mere beasts. Not counting smaller camps, there are at least 300 camps like the one at the Taungzun quarry located around Burma. Conditions at each one of them are every bit as degrading and inhumane as those described here.
Labor camps represent just a fraction of the forced labor that exists in Burma. In war zones along the country’s borders, civilians are regularly forced to act as porters for soldiers, while on countless infrastructure projects, normal citizens are called upon to “volunteer” their services. People of all ages and both sexes are required to work long hours under sub-human conditions, all in the name of “development and prosperity”. Women are often subjected to rape, in addition to the abuses faced by all forced laborers. To refuse to submit to these horrific demands would mean torture, or worse.
“It’s an unbelievable story, I know,” remarked my cellmate after he revealed the junta’s underlying motive for inflicting such suffering on the Burmese people. “But it’s true. In 1988, I lost many relatives and friends in my native town. At first, I couldn’t even believe that the army shot them down in cold blood. But it really happened. No man can erase history, no matter how hard it is to accept.”
Zin Linn is a former political prisoner based in exile.
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