BURMA: Villager and Monk Brutally and Bizarrely Tortured for a Week to Confess to Rape and Murder

By Asian Human Rights Commission • January 23, 2013

The Asian Human Rights Commission (AHRC) has received extensive information about the case of a young man and a monk whom police accused of raping and murdering a young woman and tortured brutally for a week in 2010 in order to force a confession with which to convict the two. Despite the retraction of the confession in court, the judge convicted the two men and omitted any reference to the alleged torture from the verdict. For the last two years the two have languished in prison. They have now appealed to the president for their release.

CASE NARRATIVE:

The AHRC has obtained detailed depositions of the two men accused in this case concerning torture that they both sustained for over a week. A summary of some details of the torture is contained here.

The police arrested the two accused, San Win and U Thubodha, following the alleged rape and murder of a teenage girl in a village in Monywa district at the end of March 2010. After the girl’s body was found the next morning, the authorities called all able males in the village to the school, where they questioned each and ordered them to strip off their shirts. By that time, the actual alleged offender, the son of the head of the village administration, had already left the village. They made a number of arrests, including of San Win, whom they held in custody in the village illegally, and the next day took back to a police station.

Although the police led San Win to believe that he would be released, they began to torture him brutally on April 4. That night, the police forced him to strip his clothes and made him kneel on sharp gravel with his hands cuffed behind his back, during which time three policemen assaulted him with truncheons on rotation. One policeman hit his penis with a stick and others held down San Win and ran a roller back and forth over his shins under heavy pressure; a technique that causes excruciating pain and leads the skin to peel off the legs.

For the next two days and nights the police held San Win in that lockup without giving him food or water and keeping his hands cuffed behind his back and chained to the cell bars. The chain was only long enough to stand or sit, preventing him from lying down and sleeping. On April 7, they took him to the township police headquarters where they forced him into stress positions, such as imitating riding a horse. Because he was exhausted from lack of sleep, food and water, San Win kept falling to the floor, whereupon a policeman would kick him and force him to get back up. They repeated this type of torture the next day. They also hoisted San Win off the ground, keeping him dangling with his arms bent up behind his head for perhaps an hour, after which they lowered him so that his feet could touch the ground but did not untie him, instead leaving him like that for the night.

Again on the night of April 11 a number of police took San Win into an interrogation room and assaulted him by punching him in the sternum, and hitting his face. They forced him to sit cross-legged and face down while a police officer pushed his knees into San Win’s back and thrust his stomach in, causing him to gasp and convulse. They asked him if he wanted the torture to go on for a month, and said that beyond ten days he would not survive. At 9pm that night the police came in drunk and in a bizarre ritual forced him to put on the clothes of the murder victim, while they jeered and yelled the girl’s name, saying that she herself had uncovered her murderer. After San Win took off the clothes he was forced to stay kneeling throughout the night.

On April 12, the police told San Win to sign some documents, but San Win refused and a policeman punched and slapped him until he was dizzy. They guided him to make a signature on some papers. Later they tried to force him to confess before a judge, but when he refused they did not press the matter because they already had a confession from his co-accused, U Thubodha.

The police called U Thubodha for questioning at the Winmanar Police Station on the afternoon of April 3. They took him into a side room and assaulted him. When he cried out, they stuffed paper into his mouth and then forced him to kneel on sharp gravel. One kicked him savagely in the back and punched him in the stomach. He hit the monk’s forehead onto the hard floor, causing it to swell up. Then he forced him also to wear the young girl’s underwear and accused the monk of using sorcery to entrap her. He also went and got the girl’s slippers and slapped and rubbed the monk in the face with them. He later brought the girl’s top and forced him to wear it.

On April 4 the police took Thubodha to another room and strung him from the ceiling the same like San Win. While dangling, police hit him in various parts of his body and threatened to kill him if he did not admit to the crime. The torture continued in this manner for about half an hour and they went out for tea. They got a rope and made it into a noose. They tied it around his neck and pulled him up so that he was on his tip-toes and gasping for air and again threatened him to admit to the crime saying they would kill him if he lied. They also stuck three needles through the middle of his tongue and pulling again on the noose asked him if he wanted to die.

The police stopped the torture for a while after a warning that he might die from the township police chief, but then started to beat him again and again pulled him up by rope so that he was dangling, and told him that if he didn’t speak up then he would die that night, and that if they killed him nothing would happen to them. One hit him repeatedly with a stick, but when he started bleeding the policeman stopped. He made the monk kneel on sharp gravel and say repeatedly that he was the one who did it to the girl.

Finally, because he could not bear the torture any longer Thubodha said that he would say and sign whatever the police wanted. They said that if they did as they said, he would get food and water, which he had not received since his time in custody. They gave him some water, let him bathe and put him back in the lockup. Later, at the township headquarters, however, the torture continued. Some police burned the hair around his anus with lit cigarettes, and one pulled down his uniform pants and stuck his penis at the monk’s anus, asking him if he had done it to the girl like that. They beat him repeatedly.

On April 6, the police instructed Thubodha on how to confess and took him to a judge. But when before the judge the monk refused to confess and said he had been tortured. Rather than doing anything about it, the judge just told the police to take him back. Once back at the headquarters, the torture began again. The police made him hold a grenade and pointed a revolver at him, saying they would kill him. When they again took him to court, this time Thubodha met the same judge but the judge did not ask anything, only falsely recorded that he had no injuries and made him sign documents.

On April 30 the trial of the two accused opened in the district court. Both of the accused testified that they had been tortured for throughout their custody and U Thubodha retracted the confession that he had given. Furthermore, the material evidence was inconclusive. The examining doctor could not find evidence that the girl had been raped prior to her death as the police had claimed. Nonetheless, the district court sentenced the accused based on the confession and on witness testimonies against them that the police had also coerced or cajoled other villagers to give, and presently the two accused are detained in Mandalay jail.

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION:

The AHRC has for some years documented cases of brutal torture in ordinary criminal cases in Burma, most recently in the case of Myo Myint Swe, who died in custody and whose body showed extensive evidence of professional torture techniques: AHRC-UAC-176-2012.

These cases and others that the AHRC has documented put pay to the misconception that torture in Burma was essentially associated with the cases of political prisoners and that therefore in the current situation as political conditions change the incidence of torture will decline significantly. Although police officers are having to be more cautious as the domestic media reports more openly on cases like this sort, it is clear that the use of torture is widespread and habitual, as in other countries in the region, and that it will take systemic measures to eliminate. Indeed, this case shows the extent to which all parts of the system, including judges and doctors who come into contact with victims of torture, are complicit in these crimes.

For many more cases and issues concerning human rights in Burma, visit the AHRC’s country homepage here.

Tags: Asian Human Rights Commission

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BURMA: Villager and Monk Brutally and Bizarrely Tortured for a Week to Confess to Rape and Murder

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