Dr Aung Aung Tun is actually alive and being held in Obo Prison along with his sister, Myanmar Now has learned

A clinic owner rumoured to have been killed while under interrogation after his arrest more than a month ago is actually being held in Mandalay’s Obo Prison, according to a source close to his family. 

Dr Aung Aung Tun, 28, was detained with his father, sister and another relative on April 26 for allegedly providing shelter to doctors taking part in the Civil Disobedience Movement (CDM), which aims to topple the junta. His home and three branches of his Thuriya clinic were subsequently sealed off. 

While two of his family members, including his father, were released, there was no update provided by the junta on Aung Aung Tun’s condition or charges since his arrest.

He has been charged with violating Section 50j of the Counterterrorism Law, according to a source close to his family, but it was not clear when the charges were filed or when he had been transferred to Obo Prison. 

“Only he and his sister are still in detention, I heard,” the source told Myanmar Now. 

It was not known at the time of reporting if Aung Aung Tun’s sister was also facing charges.

Several doctors in Mandalay told Myanmar Now that Aung Aung Tun’s arrest was a great loss to the medical field, and described him as having a “heart of gold.”

The military revoked the medical licences of 14 specialist doctors in Mandalay on March 12 and have reportedly been pressuring private hospitals and clinics to not employ staff who have taken part in the CDM and to submit daily patient lists to the junta. 

“Everyone is facing all sorts of troubles under the military’s reign,” Dr Soe Thura Zaw, who was among the doctors who lost their licences, told Myanmar Now at the time. “The only way to solve all those problems once and for all is to end the dictatorship for good.”

Around 80 percent of Mandalay’s medical personnel have joined the CDM, according to data compiled by members of the movement, with many opting to treat people privately rather than work under the junta-controlled health ministry. 

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Junta personnel seen sealing a branch of Dr Aung Aung Tun’s Thuriya clinic (Supplied)

Medical staff have suffered brutal reprisals for challenging the military. In August last year Dr Maung Maung Nyein Tun died in custody of Covid-19 after being beaten and denied medical treatment. 

During a major crackdown on March 27 of last year, Mandalay-based doctor Thiha Tin Tun was one of over 100 people shot dead by security forces. 

In June, the former head of Myanmar’s Covid-19 vaccine rollout, Dr Htar Htar Lin, was arrested and charged with high treason after she sought to prevent the junta from accessing funds meant to fight the virus. She was sentenced to three years in prison in April.

The civilian National Unity Government has reported that some 35,000 healthcare providers nationwide are taking part in the CDM. 

Coup leader Min Aung Hlaing said late last year that there were 10,000 doctors currently working in the public health sector. 

An officer who is not participating in the CDM told Myanmar Now that the military’s health ministry in Naypyitaw transferred some 200 army doctors and nurses into public hospitals in February and March. 

The junta spokesperson did not respond to requests for comment. 

Myanmar Now News

The women said a fellow prisoner’s miscarriage was the result of guard negligence.

Authorities in Myanmar’s notorious Insein Prison have cut off the drinking water supply to the cells of female political prisoners who protested poor living conditions in the facility after a fellow inmate who was denied medical treatment suffered a miscarriage, sources said Friday.

Sources who visited the prison on the outskirts of Myanmar’s commercial capital Yangon told RFA Burmese that dozens of prisoners have been forced to drink from the toilet after the taps were turned off more than two weeks ago, leaving them with no other source of water.

“The authorities cut off the drinking water since the protest,” said one recent visitor, who spoke to RFA on condition of anonymity.

“They put 60-70 female prisoners in one prison hall. I was told that all of them are now forced to drink water from the toilet.”

The source said that some of the prisoners have contracted cholera and other diseases after drinking the unclean water.

Last month, a 24-year-old political prisoner at Insein named Cherry Bo Kyi Naing, who is serving a three-year prison sentence for “unlawful association,” suffered an early-term miscarriage after authorities delayed sending her to the hospital for treatment.

On May 23, the female political prisoners held a protest, claiming that Cherry Bo Kyi Naing’s miscarriage was avoidable and the result of negligence by the guards. Two days later, prison authorities shut down the protest and relocated all the female political prisoners to the single prison hall, before shutting off the water supply.

When asked by RFA for comment on the situation at Insein, Prison Department spokesperson Khin Shwe denied reports that the women had been cut off access to drinking water.

“In Insein prison, we provide adequate water supplies for both drinking and hygiene,” he said.

“We don’t give such punishments for incidents that occur in the prison. We have no such thing.”

Attempts by RFA to reach the International Committee of the Red Cross in Bangkok, Thailand, went unanswered Friday. The Bangkok-based Assistance Association for Political Prisoners (AAPP) told RFA it is still making inquiries into the protest at Insein and the response by authorities and was unable to comment.

Kaythi Aye, a former political prisoner in Myanmar who now lives in Norway, told RFA that female prisoners require better hygiene conditions than their male counterparts, and access to clean water is crucial.

“Prisoners are in serious trouble when they don’t have access to clean water, especially during the monsoon season, when mosquitos proliferate and people suffer skin conditions,” she said.

“Wet conditions cause disease to spread further. It’s inhumane to cut off clean water for the female prisoners.”

According to the AAPP, security forces have arrested more than 11,000 civilians in Myanmar since the military seized power in a Feb. 1, 2021 coup. There are nearly 1,200 female prisoners across the country, around 200 of which are held in Insein Prison.

Translated by Ye Kaung Myint Maung for RFA Burmese. Written in English by Joshua Lipes.

RFA News

Executing veteran activist Ko Jimmy and NLD MP Phyo Zayar Thaw will only add fuel to the fire already engulfing the country, say regime opponents

The Myanmar regime’s announcement on Friday that it will go ahead with the execution of two prominent leaders accused of treason and terrorism was greeted over the weekend by a loud chorus of condemnation.

At a press conference on Friday, junta spokesperson General Zaw Min Tun said that appeals against the death sentences imposed on Ko Jimmy, a veteran of the 1988 pro-democracy uprising, and Phyo Zayar Thaw, a hip-hop artist and National League for Democracy (NLD) MP, had been rejected, paving the way for their execution.

The two men, who were sentenced to death in January for allegedly plotting to carry out attacks on regime targets, have been in military custody since their capture late last year. Two other men, Hla Myo Aung and Aung Thura Zaw, are also set to face execution for murdering military informants, Zaw Min Tun told reporters.

The announcement came as a surprise in a country where it has been decades since a death-row prisoner has actually been put to death.

In a joint statement signed by nearly 200 civil society organisations, Norway-based legal analyst Min Lwin Oo noted that the haste with which the appeals were rejected was “unprecedented”.

“Normally, the appeals process for death sentence takes up to three to five years through different courts and at least four to five years to go through state leaders. Such a fast-track process is unprecedented,” he was quoted as saying in the statement, which was releasedby the umbrella group Progressive Voice of Myanmar.

According to the Assistance Association for Political Prisoners (AAPP), one of the signatories of the statement, a total of 114 political prisoners, including two minors, have been handed death sentences by the regime.

Kyi Myint, another legal expert who is also a well-known political analyst, told Myanmar Now that the move would likely ignite a major backlash against the regime.

“There will be unimaginably big repercussions and serious acts of revenge,” he said. “They will be even more hated by the public.”

He also pointed out that because last year’s military coup violated Myanmar’s 2008 constitution, the current head of the regime, Senior-General Min Aung Hlaing, could also be accused of committing treason. 

“This is all the more heartbreaking because the real traitors of the country are planning to execute innocent people for treachery,” he said.

Myanmar’s shadow National Unity Government (NUG) also warned that executing two of the country’s best-known political dissidents would only provoke outrage among activists and ordinary citizens alike.

“If they actually go ahead and hang them, the military will face even greater resistance. They need to understand that the more they try to instil fear in Myanmar’s people, the stronger the people’s movement becomes,” said Aung Myo Min, the NUG’s minister for human rights.

On Saturday, the Myanmar Defence Force, an armed resistance group based in Sagaing region, echoed this sentiment with a statement warning that it would take “appropriate action” if the executions are carried out.

‘They want people to be scared of them and bow to them’, one lawyer says of the recent announcement that 19 people have been sentence to death 

There was also widespread international condemnation of the move. 

At a press briefing on Friday, Stéphane Dujarric, the spokesperson for United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres, called the planned executions a “blatant violation to the right to life, liberty and security of person, as per Article 3 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.”

Saying the UN chief was “deeply troubled” by the news, Dujarric also reiterated his calls for “the immediate release of all political prisoners in Myanmar.”

According to AAPP figures, 10,903 people arrested since last year’s coup remain behind bars.

France’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs also weighed in on what it called the regime’s “abject decision” to reinstitute the execution of convicted prisoners.

“The violation of the de facto moratorium regarding the death sentence that has existed for more than 30 years in the country represents a major setback,” it said in a statement released on Saturday.

Meanwhile, on Monday, US State Department spokesperson Ned Price tweeted that “The United States strongly condemns the Burmese military regime’s reported plans to execute pro-democracy and opposition leaders, exemplifying the regime’s disregard for human rights and the rule of law.”

Ko Jimmy and Phyo Zayar Thaw were both found guilty by junta-controlled courts of violating sections 49a, 50i and 50j of Myanmar’s Counterterrorism Law. The regime claims they were in possession of weapons at the time of their arrest and had also instructed others to carry out acts of terrorism.

The junta stepped up its use of the death penalty last year as part of its effort to crack down on anti-coup protests. However, judicial executions have rarely been carried out during Myanmar’s decades of military rule.

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