Democracy Activists Risk AIDS as Punishment  
by Dennis Bernstein and Leslie Kean 
January 11, 1998 - The Boston Globe 

BURMA'S military junta has locked up more than 1,000 pro-democracy activists in recent years. Long prison sentences under harsh conditions are debilitating enough, but another threat in the cellblocks is helping the government eliminate its opposition: AIDS. 

The case of Ye Teiza and 12 other imprisoned students provides a graphic example of a new form of oppression. In 1991, the teenagers had political tattoos removed by crude procedures that could ultimately cost them their lives. Ye Teiza said he and others from the All-Burma Basic Education Students Union were tortured for an hour as their pro-democracy tattoos were blackened with large needles dipped in ink normally used to mark pigs.  

He said the same blunt needles were used on all 13 of them, in a jail where AIDS runs unchecked and is on the rise.  

"It was very bloody," said Ye Teiza, who now lives in Thailand. "Every time the needle was stuck in, a drop of blood would come out," he added, saying he was kicked and abused if he moved. "It was so painful that, as they were removing the tattoos, about five or six people had to hold us down on the floor to keep us still. We could not see our friends when they were having their tattoos removed, but we could hear each other's cries."  

Ye Teiza worries that the needle session may yet prove fatal. "At the time, I was so focused on the pain that the possibility of catching AIDS did not cross my mind. But as soon as it was over, I realised that I could have caught AIDS. Sometimes I worry so much about AIDS that I cannot sleep at night."  

Former Burmese political prisoners living in Thailand, Australia, Norway, England and Japan reported in dozens of independent interviews that AIDS is raging in Burma’s prisons, and that the authorities are allowing it to spread. Many former prisoners believe that government officials, using improper medical procedures and punishments that expose inmates to HIV, are in effect using the disease as a weapon. Several prominent activists have already died from such exposure.  

Burma’s AIDS epidemic is now one of the worst in the world. The military government’s reported involvement in the heroin trade has sparked dramatic increases in intravenous drug use and triggered an explosion in documented HIV/AIDS cases that medical authorities say is out of control.  

According to the World Health Organisation, in 1996, more than 500,000 Burmese out of 45 million were HIV positive, a rate of more than 1 in 90. Syringes are illegal, so shooting galleries flourish where needles are shared by dozens of people. Sixty to 70 percent of addicts are HIV positive.  

Nowhere in Burma is the problem more acute than in the prisons, which are breeding grounds for AIDS and other deadly diseases. "For political prisoners, Insein jail is like Auschwitz," said Moe Aye, a student at the Rangoon Institute of Technology who was recently released after six years of imprisonment for pro-democracy activities.  

"They’ve been using the fear of needles as a weapon to threaten and intimidate us."  

Moe Aye said that demands for medical care and hospital visits for the sick once were an important point of contention with prison authorities, as desperate prisoners sought a few days of respite in the hospital. That has changed. "The needles and the syringes there are greatly feared by the people in prison," he said. "Nobody wants to risk contracting HIV."  

But Thaung Tun, deputy chief of mission at the Embassy of Myanmar (Burma) says disposable needles are now readily available to authorities. "I don’t see why they would want to use the same needles on prisoners," Thaung Tun said in an interview. "This is a charge that has not been proven." Anecdotal evidence, however, is strong.  

"To reuse needles and to subject prisoners to a serious threat of HIV constitutes cruel and inhumane treatment and violates prisoners’ basic rights," said Joanne Mariner, associate counsel for Human Rights Watch. "The United Nations has recognised these standards as authoritative as to how governments should be treating prisoners." Mariner said the Burmese government is "being dangerously negligent with regard to a deadly disease and is almost aggressively trying to spread the disease."  

Thar Nyunt Oo, a medical student and union activist, was sent to Insein jail for his political activities in the early 1990s. He said in a recent interview from Thailand that confinement with an HIV-infected prisoner is regularly used as punishment. "There are some political prisoners who were punished for protests by being put together with HIV-infected prisoners, tuberculosis prisoners or lepers." He said these criminal prisoners are allowed to "do what they want" with political prisoners.  

In 1991, Moe Zaw Oo, a member of the youth wing of the elected National League for Democracy party, refused to have a serious boil lanced by an untrained medical worker in Insein jail, and demanded to be seen by a doctor. When the prison doctor arrived, Moe Zaw Oo said the doctor warned him that "if you continue to complain I’ll send you to the hospital . . . and there are many HIV-positive patients" there.  

U Hla Than was elected to Parliament in 1990 as the National League for Democracy representative from the Coco Islands. When the military junta nullified the election results and refused to turn over power to the victors, it sentenced Hla Than to 25 years’ hard labour for attempting to form a provisional government. After spending five years at Insein - including time in a military dog area - he learned after donating blood to a bank that he was HIV positive. He died at Insein in 1996 at age 52. About 30 other elected members of Parliament remain in prison.  

U Win Tin, 67, a prominent journalist serving a 21-year sentence, also was kept in a dog cell for a time. He suffers from several debilitating medical conditions, including a heart ailment, and is at risk of AIDS at Insein jail.  

A U.S. government official said the death of U Hla Than from AIDS was one of the first confirmed casualties of the practice of needle sharing by doctors in the prisons.  

Two prominent pro-democracy activists from the People’s Progressive Party, U La Myint and U Kin Sein, have also died of AIDS contracted while serving time at Insein. "While I was in prison, U Khin Maung Nyunt, the People’s Progressive Party chairman, was put in the room where HIV/AIDS patients were kept," said Ko Aung, a former prisoner. "He died later in prison."  

It is impossible to know how many deaths are attributable to AIDS since most prisoners are not given autopsies. Thet Hmu, then a student activist, met U Hla Than in prison in 1990, and eventually helped Hla Than’s family with his funeral. "I saw many people die in the six years in Insein. I cannot remember all of their names," Thet Hmu said.  

Like many former prisoners, Thet Hmu lives with the fear that he, too, may have been given a death sentence. "In Insein jail hospital, most of the injections are given by criminal addicts," he said. "In our cell, four people were very sick so someone came and injected penicillin into all four of us with a single syringe."  

Dr. Chris Beyrer, director of Johns Hopkins Fogarty International AIDS Training Programme and an authority on AIDS in Southeast Asia, has studied the spread of the virus in Insein jail in the context of the AIDS emergency across Burma. Beyrer confirmed that needles are not typically sterilised in prison hospitals. "The prisons are horrific and deadly," he said.  

Beyrer, one of the few Western members of the Myanmar Medical Association, said an even greater risk is the practice that killed U Hla Than: The authorities routinely take blood from prisoners for the Rangoon blood bank, without sterilising equipment.  

The U.N. Special Rapporteur, mandated to report on human rights and the prisons in Burma, has not been allowed into the country since 1995. Amnesty International is also barred.  

Dr. Sein Win, prime minister of Burma’s government in exile, said: "Since these reports are now coming out, it is time that the military government allow organisations such as the United Nations, International Committee of the Red Cross, and Amnesty International to inspect the prisons in Burma. This is an urgent situation."