Two prisoners of labour camp died of hard work

Two prison labourers of the Layant Taung prison labour camp in Mrauk-U township, Arakan
state, died of exhaustive hard labour on June 1, 2002 while they were collecting stones by diving into the Lemro river, said a prisoner who was released from the camp last week.
The two deceased prisoners, namely Maung Tun and Tun Mya, have long been suffering from fever and other complications. While passing their days without any medical treatment, the army engaged them in underwater stone collection. At one stage the two poor prisoners could not withstand the exhaustive hard work and had not appeared from their diving. But their dead bodies were found later in the river, he further said.

Taking advantage of the situation, the jailer of the prison camp accused the other inmates of killing Maung Tun and Tun Mya and extracted double slave labour from them for the benefit of the jail officers, MI-18, and District Peace and Development Council known as Dasaka officials. The stone pieces collected from such unpaid prison hard labour are sold among the officers and it has become a lucrative business for them since 1999, said a source in the prison camp.

The jailer of the Leyant Taung prison labour camp first sells these stone pieces to MI ¬18 at the rate of Kyats 1200 per hundred cubic feet, which sells them again to the Dasaka of Akyab at Kyat 5000 per hundred cubic feet. The prisoners are kept on chains. They have to sleep in huts with compound surrounded by three layers of barbed wire. They are shackled while sleeping and working. Some of them are chained up with four to five chains. The prison authorities and military treat them as animals. Normally they work 7 am to 4 pm. Sometimes, they are engaged in extra works in the personal projects of the authorities like brickfields, shrimp-culture, etc. for their monetary benefits, said the source.

It may be mentioned here that the Burmese military regime (SPDC) have been established prison labour camps all over Burma, particularly in the ethnic nationality areas after 1988 coup. Convicts are regularly used for unpaid labour as porters, on major infrastructure projects and at rock quarries. They included both criminal convicts and political prisoners. Convicts doing forced labour are generally treated much more brutally than ordinary civilians are routinely used in very dangerous works, such as lowing up rock faces or digging at cliff-sites, in which many of them killed.