ASEANEWS HEADLINE-CIVIL WAR | Myanmar: 12 Myanmar political prisoners died from inadequate medical care in 2024: report
View of Yangon’s Insein Prison in January 2024 (Photo: AFP)
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The Political Prisoners Network-Myanmar (PPNM) has reported that 12 political prisoners died between January and September 2024 because they were denied access to necessary medical care in prisons throughout the country
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At least 12 political prisoners have died in Myanmar between January and September 2024 due to prison authorities’ failure to provide adequate medical treatment, according to report released Tuesday by a prisoners’ rights monitoring group.
Half of the deceased prisoners died after sustaining injuries during interrogation and subsequently being denied care that might have prevented their deaths, the report by the Political Prisoners Network-Myanmar (PPNM) claimed.
In a statement accompanying the report, the PPNM said that at the time of their deaths, three of the victims were being held at Daik-U Prison in Bago Region, two at Kyaikmaraw Prison in Mon State, and one each at Yangon’s Insein Prison; Mandalay’s Obo Prison; ; Bago Region’s Pyay Prison; Mon State’s Thaton Prison; and Magway Region’s Magway and Thayet prisons.
Memento Maxima Digital MarketingThe report also included personal details about the 12 deceased prisoners, including that two were police officers that had defected to the Civil Disobedience Movement to resist military rule, and two were women aged 22 and 35.
Six of the slain prisoners died after interrogation when they told authorities they were experiencing abdominal pain but were denied proper treatment from prison doctors, PPNM claimed.
The other six were long-term patients suffering from hypertension, cancer, or liver, kidney, or heart conditions whom the authorities failed to provide with needed medications or treatments before their deaths, according to the report.
The military regime’s prison authorities are known to confiscate medications sent to inmates by family members or brought during prison visits, returning them to the intended recipients arbitrarily or in insufficient quantities, if at all.
Prison authorities have also assigned political prisoners to the same cells as other inmates with communicable diseases such as tuberculosis, according to a political prisoner’s family member, and only give supplements or painkillers sent by families at a rate of one pill per day.
Prisoners can only hope to avoid these abuses by bribing the authorities, the prisoner’s family member said, and political prisoners are usually the targets of the worst mistreatment.
“The prison dormitory director keeps the medicines. Inmates who are detained on narcotics charges or can bribe the guards are treated better. They show more favour to army deserters, too. They’re harsher with political prisoners than anyone,” the family member said.
“Prison staff also lie that medicines sent from home are lost, and don’t give them to political prisoners. Prisoners serving long sentences get them, but even then, some are confiscated,” she added.
Thike Tun Oo, a representative of the PPNM, confirmed that prison authorities throughout Myanmar not only deprive political prisoners of proper healthcare but also withhold medications sent by their families.
“They’ve tightened restrictions in most prisons. The stricter security measures became apparent around Thingyan this year,” he said, referring to a Buddhist festival celebrated in April.
The PPNM press statement accompanying the report alleged that with respect to political prisoners, the military regime’s prison authorities have effectively come to treat prison hospitals as temporary holding cells for sick and injured inmates rather than as treatment facilities.
Considering these conditions in the prisons, the statement argued, prisons have effectively become a new front in the junta’s war against the resistance, with prison authorities regularly finding pretexts for causing regime opponents’ deaths.
According to the Assistance Association for Political Prisoners-Burma, there are 21,002 people imprisoned for political reasons throughout Myanmar as of October 1.
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