(AP Illustration/Peter Hamlin and Raghu Vadarevu)

The soldiers in rural Myanmar twisted the young man’s skin with pliers and kicked him in the chest until he couldn’t breathe. Then they taunted him about his family until his heart ached, too: “Your mom,” they jeered, “cannot save you anymore.”

The young man and his friend, randomly arrested as they rode their bikes home, were subjected to hours of agony inside a town hall transformed by the military into a torture center. As the interrogators’ blows rained down, their relentless questions tumbled through his mind.

“There was no break – it was constant,” he says. “I was thinking only of my mom.”

Since its takeover of the government in February 2021, the Myanmar military has been torturing detainees across the country in a methodical and systemic way, Our Associated Press has found in interviews with 28 people imprisoned and released. Based also on photographic evidence, sketches and letters, along with testimony from three recently defected military officials, AP’s investigation provides the most comprehensive look since the takeover into a highly secretive detention system that has held more than 9,000 people by October 2021. The AP found that the military has also taken steps to hide evidence of its torture.

The torture often begins on the street or in the detainees’ homes, and some die even before reaching an interrogation center, says Ko Bo Kyi, AAPP’s joint secretary and a former political prisoner.

“The military tortures detainees, first for revenge, then for information,” he says. “I think in many ways the military has become even more brutal.”

The military has taken steps to hide evidence of its torture. An aide to the highest-ranking army official in western Myanmar’s Chin state told the AP that soldiers covered up the deaths of two tortured prisoners, forcing a military doctor to falsify their autopsy reports.

A former army captain who defected from the Tatmadaw in April confirmed to the AP that the military’s use of torture against detainees has been rampant since its takeover.

“In our country, after being arrested unfairly, there is torture, violence and sexual assaults happening constantly,” says Lin Htet Aung, the former captain. “Even a war captive needs to be treated and taken care of by law. All of that is gone with the coup. … The world must know.”

This photo obtained by The Associated Press shows injuries a man in his 20s says he received while being tortured by Myanmar's military during an interrogation session in March 2021. He says he was one of six youths who were arrested while sitting at a restaurant one evening. All of them were allegedly beaten during their arrest and questioning. They were released the next day. (AP Photo)

This illustration provided by a former prisoner in 2021 shows a group of fellow female prisoners in Insein prison in Yangon, Myanmar. One woman detained at Insein said COVID-19 killed her cellmate. "I was infected. The whole dorm was infected. Everyone lost their sense of smell," she says. (AP Photo)

In two cases, the torture was used to extract false confessions. Several prisoners were forced to sign statements pledging obedience to the military before they were released. One woman was made to sign a blank piece of paper.

All prisoners were interviewed separately by the AP. Those who had been held at the same centers gave similar accounts of treatment and conditions, from interrogation methods to the layout of their cells to the exact foods provided — if any.

The AP also sent photographs of several torture victims’ injuries to a forensic pathologist with Physicians for Human Rights. The pathologist concluded wounds on three victims were consistent with beatings by sticks or rods.

“You look at some of those injuries where they’re just black and blue from one end to the other,” says forensic pathologist Dr. Lindsey Thomas. “This was not just a swat. This has the appearance of something that was very systematic and forceful.”

Beyond the 28 prisoners, the AP interviewed the sister of a prisoner allegedly tortured to death, family and friends of current prisoners, and lawyers representing detainees. The AP also obtained sketches that prisoners drew of the interiors of prisons and interrogation centers, and letters to family and friends describing grim conditions and abuse.