She knew that the authorities wanted her for reporting on the protests against the junta.
In the seven months since the military carried out a coup in February 2021, Myanmar has descended into chaos. Her husband, a former journalist, was detained for four days before being released.
Fearing for his safety, Thuzar San decided to buy a bus ticket from Yangon to the Thai border town of Mae Sot, which will depart on September 2, 2021.
But two days before she was to leave, the police arrested her as plainclothes policemen stopped her taxi at a traffic light.
“They asked us to put our hands on our heads at the side of the road while the car was searched and then handcuffed us, forced us into a truck at gunpoint and blindfolded us,” he told Radio Free Asia.
Thuzar was one of the locally hired reporters at the RFA Burmese Service’s Yangon bureau between 2013 and 2014.
“There was another woman with us. When we got to the (interrogation) center, they said, ‘Let the lady come out first,’ so I asked if she was the one they were talking about. Suddenly, I was slapped across the face.”
During that first night, Thuzar’s interrogators subjected her to brutal mental and physical abuse in an attempt to learn what she knew about the opposition junta and other journalists who had covered the protests.
“Four guys surrounded me and beat me with a bundle of three (bamboo) poles tied together,” he said. “They asked me the names of the two young men I met during the protest. I was friends with them on Facebook, but I didn’t know much about them.”
Her captors hit her five times with a bamboo tree that night and said the wounds on her thighs took “more than a year” to heal.
“I will never forget the pain of being hit with the bamboo shoot,” she said.
whipped mercilessly
Later, she was taken from her cell, blindfolded, and taken outside, where she was forced to kneel on the pavement. Again, her captors beat her, demanding to know how she planned to travel to Thailand, what organizations she had ties to, and which reporters planned to flee with her.
“Three guys surrounded me and beat me with batons, it was very painful,” he said. “This time, they pierced my flesh with the (sharp) tip of the bamboo tree and it was agonizing.”
When Thuzar told the men that she had nothing to divulge about her fellow reporters, they threatened to videotape her forced confession as “proof” that she was a junta informant and to take her daughter hostage.
“They told me that they could make me talk and they said: ‘We will bring your daughter and we will beat her in front of you,’” he said. “After that, she couldn’t stop crying. Finally, they sent me back to my cell.”
Over the course of several days, Thuzar was questioned by various people.
On the ninth day of her detention, her captors fingerprinted her and sent a statement to the local police station, saying that she participated in the anti-junta protests while covering the event as a reporter.
To the Insein prison
He was in police custody for nearly a month on charges of reporting false news and inciting the public against the government. On November 22, 2021, she was sentenced to two years in Yangon’s notorious Insein Prison with hard labor.
Thuzar described life in the Insein prison as a constant violation of his human rights.
“I stayed in Women’s Ward No. 9, which was like a room with closed-circuit cameras installed,” she said. “We had to change our clothes and use the bathroom there (in front of the cameras). The prison officials scolded us regularly and used harsh words. Our rights were severely violated.”
Thuzar was released as part of a general amnesty on January 4, 2023, after spending 15 months in prison.
No longer safe in Myanmar, she fled to Thailand with her family in March.
Though she feels unleashed as a refugee in a foreign country, Thuzar said she remains strong thinking of the sacrifices of those who have given their lives in opposition to junta rule.
He vowed to return to Myanmar as soon as possible so that he can join those who are fighting for democracy and a better future in his home country.
Translated by Htin Aung Kyaw. Edited by Joshua Lipes and Malcolm Foster.