JAKARTA, Indonesia (AP) – Whether taken from their homes in the middle of the night or seized during street protests, hundreds of people have been arrested in the weeks since the military coup in Myanmar, which led to that human rights groups and experts have a significant fear of expanding the number of political prisoners in the country.
According to the Assistance Association for Political Prisoners, or AAPP, an organization based in Myanmar, as of Tuesday, about 696 people – including monks, writers, activists, politicians and others – have been arrested in connection with the coup.
Many of those arrested were charged with a legacy of laws – some dating back to British colonial times and others instituted under previous military regimes – used by every government against critics, including the one led by Aung San Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy. party, who were expelled in the February 1 coup.
“The National League for Democracy was comfortable solving oppressive laws in the books because in some cases they felt they could possibly exploit these laws themselves,” said Ronan Lee, a visiting scholar at Queen Mary University of London, the International State Crime Initiative said. .
“It is now clear that some of these laws against democracy fighters are going to be incited in a way that the National League for Democracy may not have foreseen,” Lee said.
While the military continues to use and amend old laws to counter opponents, new laws are also being introduced that indicate the military intent to keep protesters under arrest.
The hundreds arrested since the coup join the hundreds of political prisoners in the country who have been locked up under the previous junta and the National League for Democracy, or NLD.
“We have now seen not only a new generation of political prisoners, but also the replacement of former political prisoners,” said Manny Maung, a Myanmar researcher at Human Rights Watch in New York.
During the NLD regime, journalists, critics of the army and the government and others were charged under the laws of the colonial era. According to the AAPP, Myanmar had more than 700 political prisoners on January 31, with hundreds charged during the NLD’s rule.
Many of the oppressive laws used against dissenters date back to the country’s colonial era.
After more than 120 years of British colonial rule, Myanmar, then called Burma, became an independent republic in 1948. Although it was no longer a British territory, the country retained many of its colonial-era laws, which were ‘naturally designed to oppress and silence political opponents,’ “said Nick Cheeseman, a fellow at the Department. of Political and Social Change at the Australian National University, said.
In 1962, the army took control of the country through a coup, and it remained under junta rule for decades. Under the junta, people were regularly locked up for speaking out against the military. Those arrested were often sent to prison for years, and torture – including beatings, water boarding and deprivation of food and sleep – was commonplace, according to the AAPP. Suu Kyi was held under house arrest for a period of 21 years for 15 years.
Before democratic reforms finally took place – a period during which Suu Kyi was released from house arrest – her political party agreed to run in by-elections in 2012 and press censorship was eased – Amnesty International estimates that Myanmar has more than 1,000 political prisoners, citing it “One of the highest of such populations worldwide.”
In the years following the release of Suu Kyi from house arrest in 2010, a prisoner amnesty led to the release of thousands of prisoners, including 200 political prisoners, while others remained prisoners.
For many observers, it was hope for further reforms, a view that was strengthened when Suu Kyi’s party took power after a landslide victory in the 2015 election.
But the hope quickly vanished in the ensuing years, as oppressive laws remained widely in the books and political prisoners remained without official recognition.
The lack of abolition of harsh criminal codes has upset freedom of speech and other activist groups in Myanmar, but ‘did not really affect how many people in the West interacted with Aung San Suu Kyi’ or her government, Lee said. , the scholar, said.
“What the military is trying to do is use the laws to give some legitimacy to their illegal seizure of power. The NLD has given them the opportunity to do so by leaving old laws intact,” Lee said. “But there is also no doubt that if these laws did not work for the military, they would still find other ways to arrest people.”
Since this month’s coup, the military has also amended old penal codes and proposed new laws that experts say could be used as further tools to crack down on opponents.
For example, amendments made to the country’s criminal justice divisions on High Treason on Feb. 14 say people could be sentenced to 20 years for planning to hamper the success of defense or law enforcement.
A controversial proposed cyber security law requires the removal of comments on the Internet that are considered misinformation or misinformation that could cause “hate” or stability, and any comments that may violate existing law. Those charged with violating the law could face up to three years in prison.
The legal changes ‘are an example of a military effort to suppress opposition’, said Bo Kyi, a former political prisoner and founder of the AAPP. “The wording of these amendments literally exposes someone to imprisonment.”
With the continued repression of protesters against coups – with arrests by ordinary police in the middle of the night – prominent pro-democracy activists told The Associated Press that they had begun staying in safe houses to arrest. Others who have been arrested have not yet had contact with their families, and their locations remain unknown.
“Circumstances (for prisoners) are something we’re really worried about,” said Maung, a Human Rights Watch researcher. “We expect the worst, namely that people will be abused and possibly even tortured, because that was what happened before.”