June 20, 2024
In Daik-U Prison, over eighty political prisoners were brutally beaten by prison authorities on the evening of June 15, 2024. This assault resulted in severe injuries for more than thirty prisoners, including five women in their thirties, who sustained critical injuries.
The attack involved forty political prisoners transferred from Kyikmayaw Prison and over forty others already held in Daik-U. The altercation began when prison authorities confiscated the transferred prisoners’ personal belongings and food supplies. When the prisoners protested for their rights, the authorities responded with extreme violence, including firing guns in the air, and using rubber batons, wooden rods, and slingshots. During the melee, approximately fifty prisoners were injured.
Despite the severity of their injuries, five critically injured prisoners have been denied hospital treatment and remain in the prison, receiving only minimal care. Reports suggest that rubber bullets were fired into a crowded cell, causing serious injuries to many.
Among those injured were prominent figures such as Ma Nu Nu Aung, the head of the Farmers’ Affairs Department and the Children’s Department of the Peace and Open Society, and Ma Khet, both from the 88 Generation. Ma Nu Nu Aung sustained significant injuries.
There are unconfirmed reports of fatalities due to the violent crackdown, but these have not yet been verified. None of the injured prisoners have been allowed external medical treatment at Daik-U Hospital or Bago Hospital.
In Daik-U Prison, fifteen political prisoners died between May 2023 and March 2024. On May 8, 2023, 32-year-old political prisoner Ko Lin Lin Htun died after being granted external medical treatment only at the last moment. In the past three months alone, three political prisoners have died due to inadequate medical treatment in prison and the denial of external medical care.
The brutality and neglect faced by these prisoners highlight ongoing human rights abuses within Myanmar’s prison system, with activists and political figures bearing the brunt of the regime’s repression.
