Former Myanmar Political Prisoners Describe Torture, Including Gay Rape

Thet Oo says his military interrogators in Myanmar kicked him in the head until he blacked out, shackled his polio-ridden legs, and then threw him in a tiny, dark cell where he spent much of the next 12 years.

''They treat people like animals,'' said the 46-year-old, one of dozens of former political prisoners who have fled across the border to Thailand.He and others recounted this week how they had been imprisoned and tortured by Myanmar's military regime for their pro-democracy activities.

Oo was a security guard for opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi before she was placed under house arrest in 1989. Her party won national elections the next year, but the junta did not recognize the results and began rounding up her supporters.

Oo was detained and brought before his interrogators, who reeked of alcohol, and was beaten so badly that he lost most of his hearing.

As Myanmar's security forces cracked down on demonstrators last week, former prisoners said they were sickened by televised images of Buddhist monks and students being chased down, bludgeoned with batons, and loaded onto police trucks.

''I'm so worried for them,'' Oo told an Associated Press reporter and television crew traveling through this remote border region in northern Thailand.

Myanmar's military government has repeatedly denied using torture or abusing its prisoners. A group of political prisoners is collecting evidence, including lists of jailers and torturers, to give to human rights organizations.

The Assistance Association for Political Prisoners, comprised of around 100 former inmates, has already put out one report on torture in Myanmar. It described gay rape, electric shocks to the genitals, partial suffocation by water, burning of flesh with hot wax, and being made to stand for hours in tubs of urine and feces.

The government said 10 people were killed and nearly 2,100 arrested in last week's demonstrations, with 700 later released. Diplomats and dissidents say the death toll is likely much higher and up to 6,000 people were seized, including hundreds of monks who led the protests.

Some were brought to Yangon's notorious Insein prison. Witnesses said others were held in university buildings and an old horse track for questioning.

Those who have been released so far have been too frightened to speak out about their treatment. One man detained for five days, however, said he was not allowed to contact his family, had no bed, and did not get enough to eat.

Myanmar's military seized power in 1962, ending an experiment in democracy and leading the resource-rich nation toward isolation and economic ruin. The current junta has been in power since 1988, when it crushed pro-democracy demonstrations.

Myo Myint, who lost a leg, an arm, and an eye while fighting as a soldier for the Myanmar government, was arrested in 1989 after he quit the army and switched his loyalty to the pro-democracy movement.

He says his interrogators stripped him naked and tied him with a leather belt to a seesaw, placing him head down for four hours and pouring water in his face as he fell in and out of consciousness. Another time they put a bag over his head and kicked away his crutch.

''I still have nightmares,'' the 45-year-old says. ''I wake up, and my whole body is wet with sweat.''

Oo Tezaniya, a 42-year-old monk who spent eight years and three months in prison for opposing the government, clenched his hands in the folds of his saffron robe as he told how he was seized in the middle of the night in 1988.

He was brought to an interrogation center, beaten with guns, and then thrown into a dark cell for a month with two other men and no bathroom.

''There was excrement all over the floor,'' he said.

Tezaniya's heart sank this week when he saw pictures of what dissidents said was a monk's body floating face down in a Yangon river. The junta said in a statement Friday that the body was not of a monk but of a man ''with a piece of saffron robe tied round the neck.''

''I thought the monks might be arrested and defrocked, but not that the troops would open fire,'' Tezaniya said sadly. ''I'm surprised, even after all I've seen.'' (Robin McDowell, AP)

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