Myanmar's military has been systemically torturing detainees since its taking over the country last February, an AP investigation has found
The Myanmar military has a long history of torture, particularly before the country began transitioning toward democracy in 2010.
The young man and his friend, randomly arrested as they rode their bikes home, were subjected to hours of agony inside a town hall transformed by the military into a torture centre. Inside the town hall that night, soldiers forced the young man to kneel on sharp rocks, shoved a gun in his mouth and rolled a baton over his shinbones. They slapped him in the face with his own Nike flip flops.He refused to scream. But his friend screamed on his behalf, after realizing it calmed the interrogators.
An aide to the highest-ranking army official in western Myanmar’s Chin state told the AP that soldiers covered up the deaths of two tortured prisoners, forcing a military doctor to falsify their autopsy reports. Last week, in an apparent bid to improve its image, the military announced that more than 1,300 detainees would be freed from prisons and the charges against 4,320 others pending trial would be suspended. But it’s unclear how many have actually been released and how many of those have already been re-arrested.