Myanmar political prisoners fight on in Thailand

MAE SOT, Thailand, June 7 (Reuters) The photographs cover almost an entire wall, 200 simple black-and-white reminders that opposition leader and Nobel peace laureate Aung San Suu Kyi is not the only prisoner of conscience in military-ruled Myanmar.

In addition to the pictures on display in an unmarked house in the Thai border town of Mae Sot are another 900 men and women, Buddhist monks and lay people, thought to be behind bars in the former Burma because of their beliefs.

Myanmar's current junta, the latest incarnation of an unbroken succession of military rulers dating back to 1962 and an ''outpost of tyranny'' according to Washington, denies it is holding any political prisoners.

But the pictures on the walls of the Assistance Association for Political Prisoners (AAPP), and the testimony of the people who run it -- themselves former inmates of notorious hellholes such as Yangon's Insein prison -- suggest otherwise.

''This was my friend,'' said Khun Saing, an urbane 54-year-old former medical student who spent 13 years inside Myanmar jails before fleeing to Thailand in 2006.

He is pointing to a picture of Bo Ni Aung, who died in June 2001 of HIV he contracted from a dirty needle while in prison.

His finger moves on to Aung Haing Win, whose family was offered 100 dollars in compensation after he died in prison. They never saw his body. All they received was a pile of ashes.

Next is Win Tin, a journalist with the dubious honour of being Myanmar's longest-serving political prisoner, having been sentenced to 20 years in 1989 for writing a critical human rights report and sending it to the United Nations.

VITAL LINK Formally established in 2000 in Mae Sot, 430 km north of Bangkok, the AAPP has become the main source of information about the plight of political prisoners in Myanmar, one of the most isolated and secretive nations on earth.

Keeping in touch with secret contacts by letter, phone and e-mail -- even though the junta blocks Web sites such as Hotmail and Yahoo -- they have built up a unique database of the ''disappeared''.

Without it, the outside world would almost certainly forget.

Official media in Myanmar are completely silent on all political trials and detainees. Details of arrests, trials or deaths filter out only through friends and family, or government sources too scared to give their names.

''We manage to get a lot of information over mobile phones and the Internet,'' Khun Saing said. ''Many activists know how to use proxy servers and get round the censors. The government intelligence people are not so smart,'' he said with a smile.

Accounts of those who, like Khun Saing and 42-year-old Bo Gyi, have survived also provide damning evidence against the ruling generals and suggest they are unwilling to give any ground to those who want democratic reform.

''During my second time in prison, I was kicked and beaten with rubber truncheons very severely,'' said Bo Gyi. ''They had accused me of agitating inside the prison and making contact with outsiders.'' On display in a concrete-floored room kept sweltering hot to replicate conditions inside a cell are crude drawings of the various stress positions prisoners are forced to maintain for hours on end.

''SACRIFICE'' Despite their precarious situation as only semi-legal migrants in Thailand -- itself under military rule following a coup in September -- neither man wants full asylum in case he is forced to leave for a third country and give up the fight.

''Any struggle without sacrifice cannot succeed,'' Bo Gyi said, taking a long drag from a dark green Burmese cheroot.

He has ultimate respect for student leaders such as Ko Ko Gyi and Min Ko Naing who launched a tentative new stand against the generals this year, demanding action against the decline in living standards in a country now one of the poorest in Asia.

''They are sacrificing their lives for the future generation,'' he said.

Despite being in Thailand, former prisoners still fear the knock at the door, although this time it is the Thai, not Myanmar police, who have the authority to send them back.

Fortunately for Khun Saing, they do not display the inclination.

''The thing we fear most is being deported,'' he said. ''If we get sent back, we face a death sentence.'' REUTERS CS KP0840