A License to Torture ? restrooms are only as high as the chest of a person without roof. While bath water is strictly limited, people also get scabies and other skin infections due to insanitation. There is a hospital in the prison premise. But accompanies are not allowed to take care or take to clinic. While medicines are scarce, making it very difficult for those who have to take regular pills to deal with chronic disease, medical equipment is outdated and underqualified. “The blood pressure monitor they used in the prison did not show the actual measurements. But we had to use it,” the interviewee added. Another former political prisoner answered that medical supply in prisons is inadequate while prisoners in dire health conditions are often denied to medial access. Despite the different types of illness including chronic disease and allergies, prisoners receive the same medication. “We have a doctor in Insein Prison. We call him Dr. Decolgen because he always gave us Decolgen no matter what our illness is.”47 A female interviewee confirmed they had to pay two instant coffee packets to avoid the “assigned work” in Insein Prison. An independent media article also reported that the inmates in Insein Prison were required to pay the “authorities” 45,000 Myanmar Kyat per month to avoid being assigned “dirty work”. Since the 2021 February attempted coup, hundreds of Rohingya people have been jailed in different prisons after being arrested in different parts of the country as they fled away from worsening situations in Rakhine State to other States and Regions enroute to neighboring countries including Indonesia and Malaysia. Being lack of family’s prison visits and financial support, Rohingya inmates are subjected to discrimination, physical assaults and forced labor which includes cleaning the latrine system and stirring the septic tanks.48 Some prisoners are denied access to have a lawyer and access to family members for a long time. Solitary confinement is common to political prisoners rather than criminal prisoners because the practice is motivated not by legitimate purpose, but instead by a political or arbitrary desire of prison authorities to isolate them.49 Prison staff members beat two female political prisoners and tore their dressings in Tharyarwady prison in Bago after a confrontation in which a female political prisoner tried to stop prison staff members from physically assaulting another female political prisoner for not being able to perform the position called “Pon San” (meaning “model” in Burmese).50 The two ladies were sent to solitary confinement on March 13, 2023. 47 Equality Myanmar interview. 48 “Rohingya inmates ‘beaten brutally’ and forced to clean faeces, Insein Prison source says”, Myanmar Now, December 20, 2022, https://myanmar-now.org/en/news/rohingya-inmates-beaten-brutally-and-forced-toclean-faeces-insein-prison-source-says/ (accessed June 10, 2023) 49 AAPP, Torture, Political Prisoners and Un-rule of Law: Challenges to Peace, Security and Human Rights in Burma, 2010 50 “သာယာဝတီထောင်မှာ နိုင်/ကျဉ်းတချ ို့ ရိုက်နှက်တိုက်ပိတ်ခံထားရ၊ ငါးဦးဒဏ်ရာပြင်းထန်”, RFA, April 4, 2023, https://www. rfa.org/burmese/news/tharyarwaddy-political-prisoners-04042023235644.html, (accessed June 10, 2023) Equality Myanmar 31