Times: Life in Insein

[stuart_albright@xxxxxxxxxxx]

Times (London)

September 20 1999 FAR EAST©

Rachel Goldwyn in rural Thailand before her arrest in neighbouring
Photograph: RICHARD CANNON
Bribery is key to life in Burma's death jail
FROM ANDREW DRUMMOND IN BANGKOK

Protestors call off mass arrests
ON THE outskirts of Rangoon stands Insein prison. Burma's oldest jail, built 
by the British, has wings branching out like the points of a star from a 
central octagon. It is a striking monument to the cruelty and oppression of 
a military Government that cracks down brutally on dissenters.
Rachel Goldwyn, 28, who was led through the three sets of steel doors into 
Women's Hall No 1 last week, will have been given a taste already of what 
life will become as she starts a seven-year sentence for her protest against 
the country's State Peace and Development Council.
Although the title sounds benign, she will learn at first hand that 
political prisoners in Insein are treated below the level of rapists and 
murderers. Only the fact that she is British and her predicament is subject 
to international scrutiny will weigh in her favour.
Insein is a place of death: by beating, by deprivation and by lack of 
medical facilities. Many political prisoners have lost their minds, 
according to Win Naing Oo, an organiser of the All-Burma Students Democratic 
Front, who survived to write a report entitled Cries from Insein.
In the prison instruction cell, inmates are taught how to act and behave. 
During roll call, they have to sit cross-legged with their arms straight, 
fists on the knees and face down. When an official walks by they must show 
obeisance by squatting, with their arms straight on the knees, the back held 
straight back and head down. To show respect when standing in front of an 
official, inmates must stand with their hands crossed infront and hold their 
heads down.
When punishment is meted out, prisoners stand on tip-toes, knees bent at 45 
degrees with back straight, hands clasped behind the head and face raised. 
Inmates are beaten and kicked into this position. Prisoners can also be sent 
to the "dog cell", formerly a kennel, where they are kept in total darkness 
and forced to lie in their own excrement.
Prisoners receive two meals a day: breakfast comprises rice, pea curry - 
usually without any peas - and fish paste. In the evening they get vegetable 
soup, fish paste and rice. The quality of the rice is poor. Inmates are 
allowed to bath once a day and wash their clothes once a week. Prisoners 
bath by scooping water out of a trough and pouring it over themselves. 
Unless they can bribe a guard, they are allowed only nine shallow dinner 
plates of water.
Everything in Insein runs on bribes. Political prisoners are despised 
because they refuse to pay the guards and are subject to beatings. Bribes 
are paid for extra water, food, medicine and also for access to the prison 
hospital, which is occupied not by the sick but by drugs syndicate bosses 
who book the beds for the better food and lifestyle. Bribes are paid to gain 
seniority and to become hall "trusties", jobs which usually go to the most 
hardened criminals in the prison's 10,000 population. Political prisoners 
are not given any books and no one is allowed to own a pen. When political 
prisoners went on hunger strike to protest at the harsh conditions, all were 
beaten, several to the point of death, according to Win Naing Oo.
More than 40 political prisoners have died in Insein since 1988; the most 
notorious was the case of Leo Nichols, the consul for Scandinavian countries 
in Burma, who died in 1997. He had been jailed for possessing an illegal fax 
machine.
Ms Goldwyn may draw some comfort from the fact that, while political 
prisoners are hated by the authorities, they are respected by other 
prisoners, who understand that they are fighting for the rights of the 
Burmese people.
Yozo Yokota, the United Nations special rapporteur, who visited the jail in 
1996, was banned from talking to the prisoners. But according to his 
information, prisoners were routinely tortured by "near-suffocation, 
burning, stabbing and rubbing of salt and chemicals into wounds". They were 
also sent as punishment to work in chain gangs.
*	About 30 Western activists have cancelled plans to be arrested in Burma 
this week (Helen Rumbelow writes). Rachel Goldwyn's mother, a GP, her father 
and two other daughters met at their southwest London home yesterday to 
launch a campaign to win her release. The family have not been granted visas 
to visit her in prison and will appeal today to the Burmese Ambassador.

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