JAKARTA, Indonesia (AP) – Whether taken from their homes in the middle of the night or taken from the streets during protests, hundreds of people have been arrested in the weeks since the Myanmar military coup, which led groups for human rights and experts to fear a considerable dimension the expansion of the number of political prisoners in the country.
As of Tuesday, about 696 people – including monks, writers, activists, politicians and others – have been arrested in connection with the coup, according to the Association for Assistance to Political Prisoners or AAPP, an organization in Myanmar.
Many of those arrested have been charged with a legacy of laws – some dating back to the British colonial era and others instituted under previous military regimes – that have been used against criticism by each government, including Aung San’s National League for Democracy. Suu Kyi. party, which was ousted in the February 1 coup.
“The National League for Democracy felt comfortable leaving repressive laws on the books, because in some cases they felt they could take advantage of themselves,” said Ronan Lee, a visiting researcher at Queen Mary University’s International State Crime Initiative in London. .
“It is now clear that some of these laws will now be armed against militants of democracy in a way that the National League for Democracy may not have foreseen,” Lee said.
As the military continues to use and amend old laws to prevent dissidents, new laws are also introduced, signaling the military’s intention to further arrest protesters.
Hundreds arrested since the coup are already joining the hundreds of political prisoners in the country who were imprisoned both in the previous junta and in the National League for Democracy or NLD.
“We have now seen not only a new generation of political prisoners, but also the reorientation of former political prisoners,” said Manny Maung, a Myanmar researcher at Human Rights Watch in New York.
During the NLD’s rule, journalists, military and government critics, and others were charged under colonial law. According to AAPP, Myanmar has had more than 700 political prisoners since January 31, with hundreds charged during the NLD’s term.
Many of the repressive laws used against dissidents 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 no longer a British territory, the country retained many of its colonial-era laws, which were “conceived” in nature to be repressive and silence political opponents, “said Nick Cheeseman, a colleague in the Department of Political and Social Change at the Australian National University.
In 1962, the army took control of the country in a coup and remained under the leadership of the junta for decades. During the junta, people were regularly imprisoned for speaking out against the army. Those arrested have often been sent to prison for years, and torture – including beatings, water walks and deprivation of food and sleep – was commonplace, according to AAPP. Suu Kyi was detained at home for 15 years for a period of 21 years.
Before democratic reforms finally take place – a period in which Suu Kyi was released from house arrest, her political party agreed to run in the 2012 by-elections and media censorship was eased – Amnesty International estimates that Myanmar had more than 1,000 political prisoners, calling it “one of the highest populations in the world.”
In the years following the 2010 release of Suu Kyi’s house arrest, an amnesty for prisoners led to the release of thousands of detainees, including about 200 political detainees, while others remained incarcerated.
For many observers, this signaled the hope of further reforms, a prospect held when Suu Kyi’s party took power following a landslide victory in the 2015 elections.
But hope quickly dissipated in the years that followed, as repressive laws remained on the books and political prisoners were left without official recognition.
The lack of repeal of harsh penal codes left other groups of activists in Myanmar free to speak, but “had no effect on the number of Westerners who interacted with Aung San Suu Kyi” or her government, the scientist Lee said.
“What the military is trying to do is use the laws to add some legitimacy to their illegitimate seizure of power, and the NLD has given them the opportunity to do so by leaving the 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 the coup this month, the military has also amended the old penal codes and proposed new laws that experts say could be used as additional tools to crack down on dissidents.
For example, the February 14 amendments to the sections of the country’s Criminal Code on high treason state that people can be sentenced to “up to 20 years for planning to prevent the success of defense or law enforcement.”
A controversial proposed cybersecurity law calls for the removal of online comments deemed to be misinformation or misinformation that could cause “hatred” or disrupt stability and any comments that could violate any existing law. Those suspected of breaking the law can be sentenced to up to three years in prison.
The legal changes “are an example of an army textbook trying to suppress dissent,” said Bo Kyi, a former political prisoner and founder of AAPP. “The wording of these amendments literally exposes anyone to prison.”
With the continued crackdown on anti-coup protesters – including civilian police arrests in the middle of the night – prominent pro-democracy activists told the Associated Press that they had begun to remain in safe houses to avoid arrest. Others who were arrested had no contact with their families, and their whereabouts remain unknown.
“Conditions (for detainees) are something that really worries us,” said Maung, a researcher at Human Rights Watch. “We expect the worst, namely that people are mistreated and possibly even tortured, because that’s what happens.”