In one drawing, dozens of men sit crammed into a single room, hunched with their knees together, every inch of space occupied. In another, they lie back to back on the floor, their faces straining with discomfort.
Fourteen sketches smuggled out of Myanmar’s Insein Prison and interviews with eight former prisoners offer a rare glimpse inside the country’s most notorious jail, where thousands of political prisoners have been sent since last year’s military coup and communication with the outside world is sharply limited.
The rough, blue-ink sketches show daily life for groups of male prisoners in their dormitories, queuing for water from a trough to wash, talking or lying on the floor in the tropical heat.
Photo: Reuters
Beyond those depictions, the eight recently released inmates said the colonial-era facility in Yangon is infested with rats, a place where bribes are common, prisoners pay for sleeping space on the floor and widespread illness goes untreated.
“We’re no longer humans behind bars,” said Nyi Nyi Htwe, 24, who smuggled the sketches out of the prison when he was released in October, after spending several months for a defamation conviction, on charges he denies, in connection with joining protests against the coup.
The accounts by former inmates could not be independently verified.
Photo: Reuters
Myanmar’s junta, which seized power from the elected government of Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi, and prison administration did not respond to multiple requests for comment on conditions shown in the sketches and described by the former inmates.
Rights groups including the International Committee of the Red Cross said that they have been denied access to the jail.
Built by the British in 1871, Insein is Myanmar’s largest prison, housing many people arrested for opposing the junta.
Reuters journalists Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo, convicted of breaking Myanmar’s Official Secrets Act in 2017, spent most of their 511 days behind bars in Insein. They were released in a 2019 amnesty, before the latest coup.
PRISON POPULATION SWELLS
The artist drew the prison sketches between April and July of last year. Later released, he declined to be interviewed or identified, telling Nyi Nyi Htwe he feared rearrest.
Nyi Nyi Htwe, who met the artist in prison, said he sketched prisoners if asked and drew prison scenes wherever he went, saying he felt more relaxed while drawing. He gave Nyi Nyi Htwe the sketches as a birthday present.
Nyi Nyi Htwe said he smuggled them out on his release to show friends, family and others the conditions inside.
Since the coup, 10,072 people have been detained in the Southeast Asian country, including Suu Kyi and most of her cabinet, and over 1,730 people have been killed, according to the nonprofit Assistance Association for Political Prisoners, whose tallies are widely cited. The junta has said AAPP’s figures are exaggerated.
Many of those detained have been sent to Insein.
Built to incarcerate around 5,000 people, the prison has seen inmate numbers swell to over 10,000 since the coup, said a spokesperson for the AAPP. The figures could not be confirmed.
The sketches reflect the increase in the months after the coup, said Nyi Nyi Htwe.
In one from late April, a few prisoners sit apart in their dorm, some reading books. A picture from June shows about 60 people in the same room — many lying in tight rows down the center, the rest hunched against the walls.
Nyi Nyi Htwe said he and as many as 100 others were packed well beyond capacity into a room where they “slept a finger-width apart,” and that he watched prison officers beat inmates with batons and had to pay bribes to send messages to family that they told him often did not arrive.
‘LUCKY NOT TO DIE’
With the overcrowding came water shortages, disease, fatigue, fighting between prisoners and flourishing bribery, said people released in recent months.
“Rats ran around in the room. The toilets were filthy. The food was mixed with flies. Those who couldn’t pay a bribe had to sleep next to the toilet bucket,” said Sandar Win, a 42-year-old social worker jailed at Insein for several months for defamation after protesting against the junta.
She was released under an amnesty while awaiting sentencing for the charges, which she denies. She has since fled Myanmar.
Access to outdoor latrines was limited, forcing prisoners to defecate in buckets in their rooms, three women former inmates said. These unsanitary conditions allowed skin and bowel diseases to spread, and there was little medical help, they said.
A handwritten note by a group of anonymous Insein inmates, smuggled out to a prominent human rights activist in February, alleges several instances of medical negligence, including failure to treat people beaten unconscious and a person who had suffered a stroke and was paralyzed.
“These cases are happening right in front of us,” said the note, which was shown to Reuters by the activist, Nan Lin. “We request urgent help from international organizations and local organizations.”
Reuters could not independently verify the note’s authenticity, but several former inmates said they had witnessed or suffered beatings by guards and there was little medical support.
Despite a COVID-19 vaccination drive at Insein last summer that was publicized on state media, former inmates said the coronavirus thrived in the crowded prison. At least 10 prisoners are suspected to have died from the disease, according to the AAPP.
Nyi Nyi Htwe, who has joined an armed rebel group, said nearly two-thirds of his dormitory were sick with COVID symptoms last summer.
“They put all the sick people in our room — high fever, coughing and ill,” he said. “I was lucky enough not to die.”
The arrival of a Typhoon Gaemi last week coincided with the publication of a piece at Yale Climate Connection on the upcoming bill for coastal defenses in the US: US$400 billion by 2040. Last week’s column noted how Taiwan is desperately short of construction workers. I doubt “sea wall and dike construction workers” are on the radar of most readers, but they should be. Indeed, the extensive overbuilding of residential housing has crowded out construction workers needed elsewhere, one of the many ways the housing bubble is eating Taiwan. FLOODING For example, a September 2022 piece in Frontiers in Environmental Science, a
Allegations of corruption against three heavyweight politicians from the three major parties are big in the news now. On Wednesday, prosecutors indicted Hsinchu County Commissioner Yang Wen-ke (楊文科) of the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT), a judgment is expected this week in the case involving Hsinchu Mayor Ann Kao (高虹安) of the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) and former deputy premier and Taoyuan Mayor Cheng Wen-tsan (鄭文燦) of the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) is being held incommunicado in prison. Unlike the other two cases, Cheng’s case has generated considerable speculation, rumors, suspicions and conspiracy theories from both the pan-blue and pan-green camps.
Last Sunday’s Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) national congress was the most anticipated in years, and produced some drama and surprises. As expected, party chair President William Lai (賴清德), his New Tide (新潮流系統, usually abbreviated to 新系) faction and his allied “trust in Lai” (信賴) coalition of factions won majorities and control of the party, but New Tide did not do as well as expected due to an unexpected defection (two previous columns — “The powerful political force that vanished from the English press,” April 23, 2024 and “Introducing the powerful DPP factions,” April 27, 2024 — provide indepth introductions
Stepping inside Waley Art (水谷藝術) in Taipei’s historic Wanhua District (萬華區) one leaves the motorcycle growl and air-conditioner purr of the street and enters a very different sonic realm. Speakers hiss, machines whir and objects chime from all five floors of the shophouse-turned- contemporary art gallery (including the basement). “It’s a bit of a metaphor, the stacking of gallery floors is like the layering of sounds,” observes Australian conceptual artist Samuel Beilby, whose audio installation HZ & Machinic Paragenesis occupies the ground floor of the gallery space. He’s not wrong. Put ‘em in a Box (我們把它都裝在一個盒子裡), which runs until Aug. 18, invites