Experts fear fresh wave of political prisoners in Myanmar

Whether taken from their homes in the middle of the night or grabbed off the streets during protests, hundreds of people have been arrested in the weeks since Myanmar’s military coup, leading human rights groups and experts to fear a sizable expansion in the number of political prisoners in the country. As of Tuesday, some 696 people — including monks, writers, activists, politicians and others — had been arrested in relation to the coup, according to the Assistance Association for Political Prisoners, or AAPP, a Myanmar-based organisation. Many of those arrested were charged using a legacy of laws — some dating back to British colonial times and others instituted under previous military regimes — that have been used against critics by every government, including the one led by Aung San Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy party, which was ousted in the Feb. 1 coup.

“The National League for Democracy was comfortable leaving repressive laws on the books because in some instances they felt they might be able to take advantage of those laws themselves,” said Ronan Lee, a visiting scholar at Queen Mary University of London’s International State Crime Initiative.