Former Burmese political prisoners living in Thailand, Australia, Norway, England and Japan reported in dozens of independent interviews that AIDS is raging in Burma's prisons, and that the authorities are allowing it to spread. Many former prisoners believe that government officials, using improper medical procedures and punishments that expose inmates to HIV, are in effect using the disease as a weapon. Several prominent activists have already died from such exposure. Burma's AIDS epidemic is now one of the worst in the world. According to the World Health Organisation, in 1996, more than 500,000 Burmese out of 45 million were HIV positive, a rate of more than 1 in 90.
Syringes are illegal, so shooting galleries flourish where needles are shared by dozens of people.
Sixty to 70 percent of addicts are HIV positive. Nowhere in Burma is the problem more acute than in the prisons, which are breeding grounds for AIDS and other deadly diseases. Moe Aye said that demands for medical care and hospital visits for the sick once were an important point of contention with prison authorities, as desperate prisoners sought a few days of respite in the hospital. That has changed. This is a charge that has not been proven.