A License to Torture ? reported, recalled his encounter at the hands of Military Intelligence; that Aside from having his feet in shackles and his hands tied with rope, he was beaten and kicked during his initial interrogation. Following that, he was blindfolded and electrodes were attached to his toes while he received repeated electric shocks. 13 He was detained “without trial for almost four years”.14 The Myanmar military also practiced torture against the ethnic civilian population in a systematic and widespread manner, sometimes as a collective punishment for engaging in insurgent groups as the regime’s “counter-insurgency” operations and activities escalated. Even at the time of the so-called transition whereby national reconciliation between political opposition and the military regime was implemented, ethnic communities belonging to sustained armed resistance groups were vulnerable to arbitrary and systematic torture and ill-treatment.15 Throughout history, the use of torture in interrogation centers, detention centers and prisons significantly escalated right after the 1988 pro-democracy uprisings, which were violently cracked down by the military successor of the Burmese Socialist Programme Party regime. The State Law and Order Restoration Council (SLORC) and State Peace and Development Council (SPDC), as successive military regimes described themself at separate times, unlawfully arrested several politicians, activists and students then employed various forms of torture especially physical assault during interrogation and prison. In November 1995, a group of 29 prisoners were subjected to “severe and prolonged ill-treatment as a punishment” for their attempt to send a letter about prison conditions to the United Nations.16 Under the military-drafted 2008 Constitution, the so-called democratization process, which included releasing political prisoners - a term the State Order Restoration Council and the State Peace and Development Council never accepted - including Daw Aung San Suu Kyi and student union leaders, was implemented. Independent organizations still documented the Myanmar military’s atrocities, especially in ethnic minority areas. A 17-year ceasefire was ended by the resumption of fighting between the Kachin Independence Army (KIA) in 2011. Since then, regime forces have been committing arbitrary arrests, torture, extrajudicial executions, and enforced disappearances, clearing civilian communities and displacing people across Kachin State and northern Shan State17 while they have not ended atrocities and human rights abuse in other ethnic States including Karen State.18 As a result of the Rakhine State Riots in 2012 and the Rohingya Genocide in 2017, the Rohingya people have been subjected to massacres, mass murders, arbitrary killings, 13 Amnesty International, Myanmar: The Institution of Torture, 2000 14 Ibid 15 Fortify Rights, I Thought They Would Kill Me: Ending Wartime Torture in Northern Myanmar, June 2014 16 Amnesty International, Myanmar: The Institution of Torture, 2000 17 Fortify Rights, I Thought They Would Kill Me: Ending Wartime Torture in Northern Myanmar, June 2014 18 Karen Human Rights Group, Foundation of Fear: 25 Years of Villagers’s Voices from Southeast Myanmar, 2017 Equality Myanmar 15