My Nine Years in Hell

A former political prisoner’s story of unrelieved horror

When I began my sentence in Insein Prison in 1991 there were about 700 inmates. Before long, the number had swollen to 7,000. Convicted killers, drug traffickers, drug users, sex workers, vagrants, petty criminals, transgressors of local authority regulations—and political prisoners like myself.

Over time, and as Burma’s economic misery deepened, the number of women imprisoned for prostitution and drug offenses increased noticeably. It was sad to see how many of them were still little more than children.

Young or old, regardless of our offense and social background, we were condemned to a life stripped of pride, dignity and integrity, an unbroken existence of brutality, drudgery and filth. The days, weeks, months and years grew into what I called my “diary in hell.”

The women who suffered the most were those who should have received care and understanding—the pregnant prisoners.

I remember o­ne day in March 1994, when a UN human rights commission was scheduled to visit the prison. We were roused at 6 a.m. and told to sit o­n benches to await the visitors. The hours passed, no visitors arrived, and we were finally discharged at lunch time.

For several hours we had been compelled to sit immobile o­n those hard benches, without even a toilet break. There were about half a dozen women among us in an advanced stage of pregnancy, and for them it was torture to remain like this, without any opportunity to relieve themselves.

One of the pregnant women in our group, Mya Win, fell unconscious. She was admitted to the prison hospital and died there from a urinary infection caused by the hours of sitting.

Other pregnant women died in prison because of inadequate and unskilled medical care and the lack of proper food. o­ne woman who had just given birth was beaten for fetching water to clean herself and later died. Her baby also died for lack of milk or any other proper sustenance. The tiny corpse was placed in a plastic bag and taken away.

Child mortality was high, with TB and fever common causes of death. Children who had no o­ne outside the prison to take care of them were allowed to stay with their mothers, but they lacked the most elementary health care and education. They slept o­n concrete floors, were allowed two bowls of water a day to clean themselves and were regularly beaten by tansees (prisoners assigned to supervise other prisoners).

Bribery was rampant. It was forbidden in theory to possess cash, but in practice money would buy special treatment from the warders—a simple bedstead, for instance, access at any time to washing facilities, food, a lighter work load.

The bribes were paid in several ways. They could be handed directly to the prison authorities during visits by family members, or the money could be smuggled by various routes into the prison. The discovery of o­ne of these methods resulted in women prisoners being subjected to the most humiliating kind of search, truly a kind of rape. Infection and injuries were a common result of these searches.

One young woman imprisoned for not properly registering guests at her home pleaded in vain not to suffer the indignity and pain of a close body search, but she was beaten into submission.

Convicted sex workers suffered other humiliations. They were denied regular washing facilities, and they were given no change of clothes. When they were allowed to bathe they did so in the o­ne longyi they possessed, washing it at the same time and then standing in the sun to dry it.

Many of these women had venereal diseases such as syphilis and gonorrhea. The prison had no HIV testing facility, and it was anyway usual to send women already diagnosed with the disease to labor camps.

There was never enough water to wash clothes, and the stench of disease, unwashed bodies and dirty clothing was sometimes overpowering. Women’s wards were avoided o­n the regular inspection rounds by prison administration officials because of the odor.

But if life in Insein Prison was bad, the routine in the labor camps is reputedly much worse. Women prisoners are put to work o­n such tasks as breaking stones under a burning sun and o­n minimum rations. They are allowed just two bowls of water a day to clean themselves after a day’s labor.

Those who die while at work are buried where they drop, in graves so shallow that the bodies of the dead aren’t safe from scavenging dogs. Even in death, the horror doesn’t cease.

Pho Thar Htoo, a former political prisoner in Insein Prison from 1991 to 1999, lives in exile