A stroke of searing pain

A young Myanmar refugee speaks about the torture that takes place in the caning room of detention centres.

FEATURE

There are some wounds that time doesn’t heal. For these wounds the only balm is the ceasing of nightmares and the loose embrace of normality once again. But the passageway between darkness and light is never quite sealed.

Nom Khai, 26, has been traversing this passageway for the past three years. He lives mostly in the light these days but a single flashback can hurl him right back into the dark pool of pain and fear.

In October 2008, Nom Khai was en route to the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) to apply for his refugee card when he was stopped by police.

As a Myanmar refugee living in Malaysia for three years he was used to such occurrences and braced himself for yet another interrogation. If he was lucky he would be let off without being relieved of all his money this time.

Instead he was arrested and subsequently bundled off to a prison near Kuala Lumpur where he spent the next three months waiting to be told of his fate.

The news finally arrived and with it came the first arrow of fear. Nom Khai was to be transferred to a detention camp.

“I was taken to court where the judge passed a sentence I couldn’t understand,” he told FMT through a translator. “My translator told me it was a three-month jail term and one stroke of the cane.”

“I was scared but he tried to comfort me by saying that other detainees had received harsher punishments. What we weren’t told was the date and time of the caning.”

A typical Inmate Card provides the precise number of years and months of the penal sentence and the number of strokes but not when the sentence will be executed.

Mental torture

Caned inmates interviewed in a recent Amnesty International report, entitled “A Blow to Humanity: Torture by Judicial Caning in Malaysia”, described this indefinite period of waiting as “mental anguish” and “like waiting to be hanged”.

“At first I was calm until one of my cellmates was caned,” Nom Khai said. “I saw the pain he was in and at one point his wound was exposed. That’s when I began feeling really scared.”

“We were told that if we bribed the prison officials we wouldn’t be hit so hard. I think the fee was about RM300. I would have paid but I didn’t have any money.”

Caning officers receive regular salaries as prison officials and a bonus for each caning they perform based on the number of strokes. In 2005, the government raised that bonus from RM3 to RM10 per stroke.

Amnesty also learnt that caning officers exploit a loophole in the caning procedure whereby a stroke that misses is still counted as a stroke. For a bribe, some caning officers will agree to miss one.

But since inmates don’t know which caning officer will be assigned to them, other prison officials are used as middlemen.

Nom Khai was eventually told of his date and time of the caning a week ahead. As the day drew closer he cried himself to sleep.

“At 11am that morning 30 of us were called out and assigned numbers,” he recalled. “Mine was 12. Then we had to stand in a line outside the caning room.”

While waiting for their turn the inmates were ordered to strip and don a small loin cloth that covers the genitals but leaves the buttocks exposed. A doctor checked then checked their heart and blood pressure to certify their fitness to be caned.

“We weren’t told the reason for the examination,” Nom Khai said. “But no one was rejected.”

Completely immobilised

From the waiting area the sounds of the actual caning were clearly audible. Inmates have described it as the sound of fireworks exploding accompanied by screaming and crying.

“Boom boom boom!” Nom Khai said solemnly. His translator flinched. “Some inmates had to be carried out because they couldn’t walk or had fainted. I was finally called in at 1pm.”

Then he fell silent and stared at his hands. His subsequent narration of what took place in the caning area was succinct.

“My hands and feet were spread and tied to wooden bars. I couldn’t move. I heard the prison official shout out ‘one’ and then I felt the cane. I have never felt such pain before.”

The Amnesty report has chronicled the events from the waiting area to the caning area. According to the interviewees, when an inmate enters the caning area a prison officer reads the sentence aloud after which the inmate is forced to respond, “Terima kasih, tuan”.

The inmate is then taken to a scaffolding of an A-frame truss where his hands and legs are tied, a belt is fastened around his waist and an open panel is placed around his buttocks.

Inmates told Amnesty that the restraints rendered them completely immobilised and the resulting sense of powerlessness was terrifying. The report went on to describe the excruciating details of the caning.

“Once the inmate is secured a guard counts out the strokes. At each count the caning officer lifts his cane, takes a full-body twirl and lands the end of his cane directly on the victim’s buttocks,” the report said.

“The canes are over one metre long, 1.25cm in diameter and rinsed in saltwater so it is heavy. It travels up to 160 kilometres per hour to shred the victim’s naked skin, turn the fatty tissue into pulp and leave permanent scars that extend all the way to muscle fibres.”

Bucket of iodine

The report added that the impact of the caning causes the inmate to lose muscle control in the buttocks and at times even over his urinary and bowel functions. Nom Khai nodded silently when asked if this account was accurate.

“Before we left the area we had to bend over in front of a guard who dipped a paint brush in a bucket of iodine and brushed it over our wounds,” he said. “That was all the medical treatment we got.”

“I had to lie on my stomach for the first week and I was only able to sit after a few weeks. The scar is still visible and even now it hurts if I sit for too long.”

Since no special clothing is provided to the caned inmates, they cut out the seat of their pants to avoid the cloth from sticking to the wound.

Nom Khai was released four days after his caning and promptly sold to a syndicate in Thailand by, he alleged, Malaysian authorities. FMT was unable to verify this claim. But he returned to Malaysia within a week.

“I’m seeking asylum in the US,” he explained. “As soon as I am granted it, I will bring the rest of my family to Malaysia and we will leave together. I don’t want to live here anymore.”

Since his detention, Nom Khai has been arrested five more times but none resulted in another caning sentence. He continues to live in fear but insisted that he has no other choice.

“I left Myanmar because the junta took my father away and returned him with two broken legs,” he said. “Then the junta came for me, so I ran to Thailand and now I’m here. I’m the sole breadwinner and I’m earning more in Malaysia than I did in Thailand.”

“But it’s a difficult situation. If I return to Myanmar, I will surely be killed. If I remain in Malaysia, I am an illegal and the punishment for that is like a death sentence.”

*In 1996, amendments to the Immigration Act made caning mandatory for illegal entry and forging of immigration documents. In 2002, Parliament made immigration violations punishable by “whipping of not more than six strokes.”