Memories Keep Hope Alive in Insein Prison

By JIM ANDREW

MAE SOT — They look like dog kennels, but human beings are locked up in these concrete boxes, with tiny wire-enclosed yards for exercise.

“They’re the latest cell block at Insein Prison,” explains Aung Kyaw Oo, who spent 14 years in Insein and is the latest addition to the dedicated staff of the Thailand-based Assistance Association for Political Prisoners (AAPP).

He shows visitors around the AAPP’s small museum, one room of the organization’s headquarters in the Thai-Burmese border town of Mae Sot. Centerpiece of the museum exhibits is a scale model of Insein. Against one wall of the room is its latest exhibit—a model of the prison’s new cell block. “I wouldn’t want even my dog locked up in there,” said one visitor.

Insein’s new block is probably full to bursting these days following the series of kangaroo court trials late last year in which more than 400 activists were sentenced to prison terms of up to 68 years.

A further 600 dissidents are still being detained, awaiting trial, according to Bo Kyi, co-founder of the AAPP.

From their cramped offices in a Mae Sot backyard, Bo Kyi and his staff of 15 (including two volunteers) monitor the fate of more than 2,100 Burmese political prisoners and their families. They give material support, helping prisoners’ families to survive and to keep in touch with their loved ones.

The regime’s callous decision to send convicted activists to prisons scattered throughout Burma has placed an additional burden on the AAPP, according to Bo Kyi. Some of Burma’s 43 prisons are at least a day’s journey from Rangoon or Mandalay, making it very difficult for family members or friends to visit.

The AAPP tries to make it financially possible for families to keep in touch and to provide small necessities and food on an annual budget of US $200,000, provided by the US National Endowment for Democracy and other donors.

A small bank of computers in the AAPP’s main office contains the personal records of most of Burma’s increasing number of political prisoners. “It’s difficult to keep track,” says Bo Kyi. “We rely on many sources, some of them even in the prison service.”

Aung Kyaw Oo, who studied economics in Rangoon before his arrest and imprisonment in 1991, believes the AAPP brings not only material aid but hope to political prisoners and their families. He speaks from his experience of so many years of extreme hardship in Insein Prison.

After his release in 2005, Aung Kyaw Oo escaped to Thailand and joined the AAPP staff in August 2007, determined to work for the relief and eventual release of his fellow prisoners.

Aung Kyaw Oo has the AAPP to thank for helping him to escape to Thailand, sending him the money he needed to finance his hazardous trip.

Financial assistance was also recently sent to the wife of a political prisoner who sold her hair to raise the money to feed her family and visit her husband. “We were able to help her open a small shop to support herself and her family,” said Bo Kyi.

Aung Kyaw Oo’s dedication to his new job is strengthened whenever he conducts a visitor around the AAPP museum. Everywhere are reminders of his own prison life—leg irons, a guard’s baton, scraps of art and handicraft secretly made and smuggled out, photographs of fellow activists, some of whom have died of disease or torture.

On one wall hangs an eloquent testimonial to the sheer indomitability of Burma’s political prisoners—a beautifully embroidered piece of linen, with a love poem stitched above a cluster of flowers.

“I want you to know that everything reminds me to remember you,” wrote the unknown prisoner, working undercover in a bare cell. Memories kept him (or perhaps her?) going. And memories, the poet seems to be saying, are something no amount of oppression can destroy.