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BURMA: Use of torture in ordinary criminal cases 29.10.

09 12:54

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Print This Article A Statement by the Asian Human Rights


Commission

BURMA: Use of torture in ordinary


criminal cases
Much of the human rights advocacy concerning the use
of torture in Burma is centred on cases of political
detainees. These cases rightly deserve close attention
and study. However, the Asian Human Rights
Commission (AHRC) is aware that most victims of
torture in Burma are not political prisoners but, as in
other parts of Asia, poor citizens accused of ordinary
criminal offences. The perpetrators do not discriminate.
Victims range from teenage girls to the elderly.

Recently the AHRC obtained the details of a case of two


young male victims who were tortured at a police
station in an urban area during September 2009, over
an alleged robbery. For reasons of their security, it
cannot divulge the facts of this case, including the
name of the police station and the officers involved. In
this extract of their account, all identifying details have
been omitted, but the allegations of torture are as they
made them. According to the first:

"I was interrogated by eight police for three days. They


said to give back what I had robbed. They covered my
face with a sarong and then four or five of them
assaulted me. They hit me on the cheeks and punched
me in the face. They hit me with batons over a
hundred times on my ankles, finger and elbow joints,
shoulder blades and head. They made me stand on my
tip-toes then put something with sharp points under
my feet and made me hold a pose like I was riding a
motorcycle, for about two hours. They prodded my
back with a baton. During this time they were drunk.”

He added that his wife paid a total of the equivalent of


around USD100, which is the equivalent of more than a
couple of month's wages for poor people in Burma, to
police so that they would not torture him. His

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BURMA: Use of torture in ordinary criminal cases 29.10.09 12:54

companion also said that, "I was detained and


interrogated for two days. While interrogating me they
hit my cheeks and pressed a piece of bamboo on my
shins and ran it up and down. They kept my
wristwatch."

From the above allegations, we can make out the


following.

First, the techniques used are advanced methods of


routine torturers. They are the types commonly
associated with military intelligence officers or with
troops in outlying areas. The motorcycle and rolling
bamboo are particularly familiar methods in the
documentation in those categories of cases. However,
the torturers in this case were police in an ordinary
suburban station. Thus the methods of torture
ordinarily associated with cases of political prisoners or
alleged insurgents are actually in the entire system.

Second, the torture victims are, as noted above, typical


of the overwhelming majority of victims throughout
Asia: poor people accused of ordinary crimes, for which
the purpose of the torture is both to extract
confessions and/or to obtain money. In this case, the
accused were freed after some payments. However,
there is no guarantee that they will remain this way.
Once they have gone through this type of experience
once, it can happen again at any time. In fact, one of
them had already been interrogated over the same
alleged crime, and both have expressed fear that they
might be picked up again any day. Neither of them was
taken before a judge, even though this should have
happened within 24 hours of arrest.

Third, the victims claim that they were innocent and


that the police know this but they tortured them
anyway to conduct a fake investigation as a favour to a
local businessperson. This too is a common feature of
torture throughout Asia. It is also likely that the police
have interrogated, tortured and taken money from
other young poor men in the vicinity over the crime for
which these two were also accused. One case like this
can be very profitable for police. It is common to hear
reports of dozens or even hundreds of people rounded
up from an area in a general attempt to find some
people on which to pin blame and make money at the
same time.

The distinctive problem for these victims of torture,


then, is not that they were tortured over an ordinary
crime in an ordinary police station. This, as noted, is
an experience they have in common with victims in
India, Thailand, Sri Lanka, the Philippines, Bangladesh

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BURMA: Use of torture in ordinary criminal cases 29.10.09 12:54

and Pakistan, among others. Rather, it is that there is


nothing that they can do about it. In those other
countries, the obstacles to bringing complaints of
torture against the police are enormous, and the risks
immense. But in them there at least exist courts that
are in some way separate from the administration,
rights groups and lawyers who can work on the cases
with some effect and media that can report and
publicize to generate public opinion.

By contrast, in Burma the only thing that the victims


can really do is to lodge a complaint with high-up
authorities in the police and ministries and hope that
someone will believe them and take sympathy. If they
try to lodge a complaint in the courts, not only will they
risk police reprisals, against which they will have no
protection--since there are no groups in the country
who can hide them and no media that can report on
the case to assist with their safety through some
publicity--but they are unlikely to get any help from
the courts either. In a 1991 case of alleged police
torture the Supreme Court already made clear that
unless persons alleging torture have firm physical
evidence--which the methods of torture used are
designed to conceal--then they need not waste their
time complaining to the judiciary.

Even if the victims are lucky enough to get a


sympathetic judge, it may make no difference. The
courts in Myanmar have no effective authority over
other parts of government and are used as an arm of
the executive to obtain what it wants. They are not
supposed to hit back. Unless an army general or
someone else in a position of real importance is
supporting a court order, the police can easily ignore it
or get around it. Since in this case the allegations are
against police officers, the police would use many
methods to prevent them from being successful, or if in
the extremely unlikely event that the court actually
made an order against the police, could see that the
officers concerned escape punishment by absconding
and changing their identities, which has been done in
the past.

Therefore, persons and groups concerned with torture


in Burma should be concerned not only with its simple
documentation, or with torture in only certain types of
cases, but should be concerned above all to expose the
absence of institutions and measures to do anything
about torture, specifically, the lack of an independent
judiciary and also the lack of an open media in which
cases can be publicized.

The Asian Human Rights Commission also notes that

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BURMA: Use of torture in ordinary criminal cases 29.10.09 12:54

the 2008 Constitution, which will not come into effect


until after elections are held for semi-elected
parliaments, does not prohibit torture, and that Burma
has not joined the UN Convention against Torture. The
AHRC urges all groups and persons concerned with
human rights in Burma to actively campaign for the
country to join the UN Convention against Torture and
to include an express provision to prohibit the use of
torture into the constitution, so that at least some
minimum standards can be established upon which to
begin the real work of addressing its routine use in
police stations, council offices, army camps and other
government facilities around the country.

###

About AHRC: The Asian Human Rights Commission is


a regional non-governmental organisation monitoring
and lobbying human rights issues in Asia. The Hong
Kong-based group was founded in 1984.

Posted on 2009-10-29
Back to [AHRC Statements 2009]

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