The Bamboo Curtain II

George Packer's long article on Burma is also worth a read:

In Burma’s military-intelligence lockups, political detainees are given repeated beatings, placed in stress positions, and made to stand in water for days on end. In Insein, the torture takes a different form: extreme isolation, no sunlight, inedible food, no writing materials. (I was told that a political prisoner found with a pen was punished more severely than a prisoner hiding a knife.) When Myat Min was there, prisoners had to wear cotton hoods with cutout eyeholes any time they left their cell, in order to prevent communication between inmates. A friend of Myat Min’s was caught trying to teach himself Chinese characters by writing on a piece of plastic with a nail; his ankles were shackled together for two weeks.

(Photo: Chumsak Kanoknan/Getty.)