New Delhi: Nathan Maung, co-founder of a Myanmar-based news website, Kamayut Media, who was recently released from a Yangon prison has confirmed that he was severely tortured by the military junta along with his colleague and website co-founder Hanthar Nyein.
Maung (whose last name has been spelled Muang as well) is a US citizen and his release may have been influenced due to this factor.
While Maung was released on June 14 and deported to the US a day later, Hanthar continues to be in jail. All through, their families have been vocal about their physical abuse in custody – they had even communicated it through an anonymous intermediary to the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ).
On May 21, CPJ had demanded that the Myanmarese authorities drop all charges against them and release them immediately.
Describing his over three months’ detention at “a secretive military-run interrogation centre” at Yangon as “hell”, Nathan has told CNN Business from Washington that he had “prepared himself to die there, believing the soldiers would kill him.”
On March 9, following a raid in their office, the two journalists were taken into custody. According to CPJ, they were charged under Article 505(a) of the penal code which punishes dissemination of ‘fake news’ that could agitate or cause security forces or officials to mutiny with a maximum three-year jail term.
The Wire has reported on how this particular Article is being used to crackdown on journalists in the country.
Maung said, soon after their arrest, they were taken to the interrogation centre at Insein Prison located in Mingaladon, a suburb of Yangon city, where, he said, they were “beaten, denied water for two days and food for three.”
“They were handcuffed and blindfolded nearly the entire two weeks that they were there,” said the CNN Business news report on June 27.
On June 16, two days after his release from prison, he told CNN that interrogators stopped beating him after the fourth day, once they got to know about his American citizenship. However, Hanthar’s torture continued. Parts of Hanthar’s body, said Maung, was burned with cigarette butts.
Maung said while his own phone broke while he was arrested on March 9, he believed soldiers tortured Hanthar to extract the password of the phone they had seized from him so that they could access encrypted messages and phone records with top opposition leaders and activists protesting against the military coup.
“For days, Hanthar Nyein held out from revealing the password, offering them false numbers in the hope his phone would automatically lock anyone out of using it. But the final straw came when the guards threatened to rape him,” said the news report quoting Maung.
In the June 22 report of the Human Rights Watch, there is also a mention of a 17-year-old boy describing his “beatings, burnings from lit cigarettes, prolonged stress positions, and gender-based violence.”
“The 17-year-old boy said he was beaten for days while blindfolded and forced into a pit, then buried up to his neck in a mock burial. The military arrested him in early May during a night raid of his home and accused him of being the ringleader of a protest group,” the HRW report had said.
Maung said that on finding out that he was a US citizen, the soldiers’ line of interrogation changed and he was asked about the budget and fundraising activities of the website.
After a fortnight, he was shifted to a large cell in another detention centre before being moved to solitary confinement till his release on June 14.
Though he is now in Washington, Nathan said he felt overwhelming guilt as he was released because of his US citizenship while his colleague is still languishing in jail. “We have been through the hell together. So, we should be released together…I really want him to know that we are not forgetting him. He is not alone,” he said.
Maung’s account confirms rumours of widespread cruelty on thousands of people randomly detained across the country in the military crackdown following the February 1 coup. At least 86 other journalists are detained. Several journalists have reportedly fled the country to escape arbitrary arrests.
In April, three journalists from the news website Mizzima had fled to the Indian border town of Moreh. Mizzima’s license was reportedly revoked and its bank accounts frozen following a raid at its Yangon office; several of its journalists were also taken into custody. On May 5, the Manipur high court had asked the Indian government to ensure their passage to New Delhi where they could seek protection under the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR).
On May 24, Danny Fenster, yet another American journalist and managing editor of an independent news outlet Frontier Myanmar, was stopped from boarding a flight to Kuala Lumpur and arrested at the Yangon International airport. His employer had said that he was taken to Insein Prison.
Two other foreign freelance journalists – Robert Bociaga from Poland and Yuki Kitazumi from Japan – were detained and later expelled from Myanmar.