Detainees Dying Under Interrogation, Say Burmese Sources

A member of Burma’s opposition National League for Democracy has died in a police interrogation center, a Burmese rights group reported on Wednesday.

The report follows news from another rights group on Tuesday that two university students arrested on September 27 had also died while being interrogated.

The NLD member, 42-year-old Win Shwe, who belonged to the party’s Kyaukpadaung Township branch in Mandalay Division was arrested on September 26, together with four other activists who took part with him in supporting demonstrations by protesting monks. The fate of the other four is not known.

The Thailand-based Assistance Association for Political Prisoners (Burma) said Win Shwe’s family had been informed that he had died three days ago but had been given no further information. His body was not returned to the family, and the AAPP said it had been buried secretly.

The AAPP said Win Shwe had been detained at a police center in Palake, near Mandalay. Other detainees had died under interrogation and their bodies had been secretly disposed of, the AAPP said.

“This is a terrible crime,” said AAPP Secretary Tate Naing. “This government has been contravening human rights beyond the limit.”

The AAPP is compiling lists of missing people and certified deaths. Bodies of monks had been found in Rangoon’s Pazundaung River in recent days, it said.

The deaths of the two Rangoon University (Eastern Campus) students were reported to The Irrawaddy on Tuesday by a reliable source from his hiding place. The bodies had been secretly cremated. Shortly after speaking to The Irrawaddy, the source was arrested while talking to an exile radio station.

The source told The Irrawaddy that the two zoology students had died from drowning during their questioning in Rangoon’s Kyaikkasan interrogation center.