(Reuters) – A group of men crammed together in a room with their knees pressed against the floor, occupying every inch. One drawing shows the men lying on their backs, straining their necks, and laying flat on the floor.

14 sketches were smuggled from Myanmar’s Insein Prison. Eight interviews with former prisoners give a rare insight into the prison’s most notorious cell. There are thousands of political prisoners there since the military coup last year and communication is very limited.

    The rough, blue-ink sketches show daily life for groups of male prisoners in their dormitories, queuing for water from a trough to wash, talking or lying on the floor in the tropical heat.

    Beyond those depictions, the eight recently released inmates told Reuters the colonial-era facility in Yangon is infested with rats, a place where bribes are common, prisoners pay for sleeping space on the floor and widespread illness goes untreated.

    “We’re no longer humans behind bars,” said Nyi Nyi Htwe, 24, who smuggled the sketches out of the prison when he was released in October, after spending several months for a defamation conviction, on charges he denies, in connection with joining protests against the coup.

    Reuters could not independently verify the accounts provided by the former inmates.

    Myanmar’s junta, which seized power from the elected government of Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi, and prison administration did not respond to multiple requests for comment on conditions shown in the sketches and described by the former inmates.

    Rights groups including the International Committee of the Red Cross told Reuters they have been denied access to the jail.

    Built by the British in 1871, Insein is Myanmar’s largest prison, housing many people arrested for opposing the junta.

    Reuters journalists Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo, convicted of breaking Myanmar’s Official Secrets Act in 2017, spent most of their 511 days behind bars in Insein. The amnesty in 2019 released them, prior to the new coup.

    PRISON POPULATION SWELLS

    The artist drew the prison sketches between April and July of last year. He was later released but refused to speak with Nyi Nyi Htwe and said he feared his rearrest.   

    Nyi Nyi Htwe, who met the artist in prison, said he sketched prisoners if asked and drew prison scenes wherever he went, saying he felt more relaxed while drawing. The sketches were presented to Nyi Nyi Htwe as a birthday gift.

    Nyi Nyi Htwe said he smuggled them out on his release to show friends, family and others the conditions inside.   

    Since the coup, 10,072 people have been detained in the Southeast Asian country, including Suu Kyi and most of her cabinet, and over 1,730 people have been killed, according to the nonprofit Assistance Association for Political Prisoners, whose tallies are widely cited. According to the junta, AAPP’s numbers are exaggerated.

    Many of those detained have been sent to Insein.

    Built to incarcerate around 5,000 people, the prison has seen inmate numbers swell to over 10,000 since the coup, said a spokesperson for the AAPP. Reuters was unable to confirm these numbers.

According to Nyi Nyi Htwe, the sketches show the rise in crime rates over the following months.

    In one from late April, a few prisoners sit apart in their dorm, some reading books. Another June photo shows around 60 people in one room, many of them in close quarters down the middle and the remainder hunched up against the walls.

    Nyi Nyi Htwe said he and as many as 100 others were packed well beyond capacity into a room where they “slept a finger-width apart,” and that he watched prison officers beat inmates with batons and had to pay bribes to send messages to family that they told him often did not arrive.

    ‘LUCKY NOT TO DIE’

    With the overcrowding came water shortages, disease, fatigue, fighting between prisoners and flourishing bribery, said people released in recent months.

    “Rats ran around in the room. Toilets were dirty. Flies were mixed into the food. “Those who could not pay a bribe were forced to sleep beside the bucket of toilet paper,” Sandar Win (a social worker aged 42) said. She was being held at Insein several months after being arrested for defamation for protesting against the ruling junta.

While she waited for her sentencing, she was granted amnesty and released. In the meantime, she fled Myanmar.

    Access to outdoor latrines was limited, forcing prisoners to defecate in buckets in their rooms, three women former inmates said. They said that this unsanitary environment allowed for skin and intestinal diseases to grow and provided little medical assistance.

    A handwritten note by a group of anonymous Insein inmates, smuggled out to a prominent human rights activist in February, alleges several instances of medical negligence, including failure to treat people beaten unconscious and a person who had suffered a stroke and was paralysed.

    “These cases are happening right in front of us,” said the note, which was shown to Reuters by the activist, Nan Lin. We request immediate assistance from both international and local organizations.”

    Reuters could not independently verify the note’s authenticity, but several former inmates said they had witnessed or suffered beatings by guards and there was little medical support.

    Despite a COVID-19 vaccination drive at Insein last summer that was publicised on state media, former inmates said the coronavirus thrived in the crowded prison. According to AAPP, at least 10 inmates are believed to have succumbed to this disease.

    Nyi Nyi Htwe, who has joined an armed rebel group, said nearly two-thirds of his dormitory were sick with COVID symptoms last summer.

    “They put all the sick people in our room — high fever, coughing and ill,” he said. I was fortunate enough to live.