Female Political Prisoner Victim of Non-Existent Health Care in Burma’s Prisons

by David Calleja

December 29, 2009

A female political prisoner has died in Burma’s Insein Prison.

38 year-old Tin Tin Htwe was pronounced dead on 23 December following complications from an existing heart condition.

The mother of three had been transferred from Tharyarwaddy Prison but could not be revived.

Tin Tin Htwe was arrested in September 2007 along with 14 other activists for taking part in the Saffron Revolution. She was released on bail but re-arrested two months later for breaking Burma’s strict Penal Code and sentenced to over three years jail by Burma’s military-controlled courts.

Tin Tin Htwe is the third political prisoner to die in Burma’s jails in 2009.

It comes a few days after news of jailed democracy activist Kyaw Zaw Lwin’s (aka Nyi Nyi Aung) move into ”military dog cells” 8 x 10 feet in diameter, a practice Washington DC-based NGO Freedom Now described in a statement on December 24 as a “cruel and inhumane” form of sleep deprivation prohibited under multiple international treaties.

The cells earned their name due to their close proximity to savage military dogs who continually bark.

Thailand-based human rights organization Associated Affiliation for Political Prisoners Burma (AAPP-B) reported in its publication Eight Seconds of Silence: The Death of Democracy Activists Behind Bars that political prisoners in Burma are constantly refused medical treatment for the most basic conditions.

As of November 2009, AAPP-B has recorded 2173 individuals as being political prisoners, an increase of five from the previous month.

David Calleja graduated with a Bachelor of Social Science and Master of Social Science from RMIT University in his home city of Melbourne, Australia. He has taught English in China, Thailand, South Korea and Cambodia, where he worked for a local NGO, Sorya, based in Tropang Sdok village. In addition he has also volunteered as a kindergarten English teacher, tutor and a football coach to male orphan students in Loi Tailang, Shan State. He has narrated and produced a video biography of Cambodian students learning English entitled I Like My English Grilled. His video documenting life at Stung Meanchey, Cambodia, A Garbage Life, can be viewed online. Contact him at david_calleja@foreignpolicyjournal.com. Read more articles by David Calleja.