Human Rights Watch called Thursday on Burma to provide outsiders access to its prisons and warned that a military culture of “recreational sadism” posed a stumbling block to nascent reforms.
But David Scott Mathieson, the group’s senior researcher on Burma, said he did not see fundamental change on human rights. As a first priority, he called for reform-minded President Thein Sein to ascertain the number of prisoners.
“We still think there are several hundred political prisoners remaining in Burmese prisons. The real number is almost impossible to calculate,” Mathieson said on a visit to Washington. Burma should allow the International Committee of the Red Cross to observe prison conditions and agree to a joint team of foreigners and locals that can come up with a list of political prisoners. “We have to remind ourselves, the onus is on the government to actually prove how many people are still in prison,”
Mathieson said that commanders have long objectified minority people, highlighting cases in which the army has forced civilians to be porters who haul supplies in landmine-infested areas and has inflicted sexual violence. “One thing that strikes me doing lots of interviews with escaped Burmese army soldiers and civilian victims is this culture of almost recreational sadism, That culture within the military is probably one of the biggest challenges to change in Burma. It’s easy to change the commanders but what has to change is this sense of entitlement to abuse people, and that’s going to be a very long-term process,” he said.