Reuters, Mrauk-U, Myanmar :
When 35-year-old Ah Hla showed up to a police station in western Myanmar in late April hoping to see her husband among the prisoners, she didn’t know whether he was alive or dead.
Several dozen men, including her fisherman husband, had been detained weeks earlier when the military raided their village in central Rakhine state’s Mrauk-U township and accused them of belonging to a rebel army, residents told Reuters.
“I went there with the hope that I am going to see my husband, but he was not there,” said Ah Hla, who had walked to the
police station with a group of relatives of the detained men. When she arrived, police told her that her husband of 15 years had hanged himself in his cell, and that his body had already been disposed of.
“I passed out on the floor of the police station,” she said, cradling her six-month-old son and choking back tears.
An army spokesman told Reuters that three of the detainees had died in custody, saying one, a 24-year-old man, had a heart attack, while another died from drug withdrawal and a third, 40-year-old Thein Tun Sein – Ah Hla’s husband – killed himself.
When 35-year-old Ah Hla showed up to a police station in western Myanmar in late April hoping to see her husband among the prisoners, she didn’t know whether he was alive or dead.
Several dozen men, including her fisherman husband, had been detained weeks earlier when the military raided their village in central Rakhine state’s Mrauk-U township and accused them of belonging to a rebel army, residents told Reuters.
“I went there with the hope that I am going to see my husband, but he was not there,” said Ah Hla, who had walked to the
police station with a group of relatives of the detained men. When she arrived, police told her that her husband of 15 years had hanged himself in his cell, and that his body had already been disposed of.
“I passed out on the floor of the police station,” she said, cradling her six-month-old son and choking back tears.
An army spokesman told Reuters that three of the detainees had died in custody, saying one, a 24-year-old man, had a heart attack, while another died from drug withdrawal and a third, 40-year-old Thein Tun Sein – Ah Hla’s husband – killed himself.
