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,” theyjeered, “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 torturecenter. 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, the Myanmar military has been torturing detainees across the country in a methodical and systemic way, The Associated Press has found in interviews with 28 people imprisoned and released in recent months. 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. The military, known as the Tatmadaw, and police have killed more than 1,200 people since February.

This combination of 2020-2021 satellite photos provided by Planet Labs shows several of the panopticon-style prisons throughout Myanmar. (Planet Labs via AP)

While most of the torture has occurred inside military compounds, the Tatmadaw also has transformed public facilities such as community halls and a royal palace into interrogation centers, prisoners said. The AP identified a dozen interrogation centers in use across Myanmar, in addition to prisons and police lockups, based on interviews and satellite imagery.

The prisoners came from every corner of the country and from various ethnic groups, and ranged from a 16-year-old girl to monks.Some were detained for protesting against the military, others for no discernible reason.Multiple military units and police were involved in the interrogations, their methods of torture similar across Myanmar.

The AP is withholding the prisoners’ names, or using partial names, to protect them from retaliation by the military.

Inside the town hall that night, soldiers forced the young man to kneel on sharp rocks, shoved a gun in his mouth and rolled a baton over his shinbones. They slapped him in the face with his own Nike flip flops.

“Tellme! Tell me!” they shouted. “What should I tell you?” he replied helplessly.

In this image from video obtained by The Associated Press, soldiers, upper right, chase protesters in Yangon, Myanmar on March 3, 2021. (AP Photo)

He refused to scream. But his friend screamed on his behalf, after realizing it calmed the interrogators.

“I’m going to die,” he told himself, stars exploding before his eyes. “I love you, mom.’”

The Myanmar military has a long history of torture, particularly before the country began transitioning toward democracy in 2010. While torture in recent years was most often recorded in ethnic regions, its use has now returned across the country, the AP’s investigation found. The vast majority of torture techniques described by prisoners were similar to those of the past, including deprivation of sleep, food and water; electric shocks; being forced to hop like frogs, and relentless beatings with cement-filled bamboo sticks, batons, fists and the prisoners’ own shoes.

But this time, the torture carried out inside interrogation centers and prisons is the worst it’s ever been in scale and severity, according to the Assistance Association for Political Prisoners, which monitors deaths and arrests. Since February, the group says, security forces have killed 1,218 people, including at least 131 detainees tortured to death.

The torture often begins on the street or in the detainees ’homes, and some die even before reaching an interrogationcenter, 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.”

Monks gather to make a diagram of Obo Prison located in Mandalay, Myanmar. The AP spoke to two monks from the same monastery who were preparing to protest against the military when they were arrested and beaten. While in detention, they say they were forced to jump like frogs — a common punishment in the Myanmar detention system. (AP Photo)

Lin Htet Aungtold the AP that interrogation tactics are part of the military’s training, which involves both theory and role playing.He and another former army captain who recently defected say that the general guidelines from superiors are, simply: We don’t care how you get the information, so long as you get it.

After receiving detailed requests for comment, military officials responded with a one-line email that said: “We have no plans to answer these nonsense questions.”

Last week, in an apparent bid to improve its image, the military announced that more than 1,300 detainees would be freed from prisons and the charges against 4,320 others pending trial would be suspended. But it’s unclear how many have actually been released and how many of those have already been re-arrested.

All but six of the prisoners interviewed by the AP were subjected to abuse, including women and children. Most of those who weren’t abused said their fellow detainees were.

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.

Photographs taken inside several detention and interrogation facilities confirmed prisoners’ accounts of overcrowding and filth. Most inmatesslept on concrete floors, packed together so tightly they could not even bend their knees.

Some became sick from drinking dirty water only available from a shared toilet. Others had to defecate into plastic bags or a communal bucket. Cockroaches swarmed their bodies at night.

There was little to no medical help. One prisoner described his failed attempt to get treatment for his battered 18-year-old cellmate, whose genitals were repeatedly smashed between a brick and an interrogator’s boot.

Not even the young have been spared. One woman was imprisoned alongside a 2-year-old baby.Another woman held in solitary confinement at the notorious Insein prison in Yangon said officials admitted to her that conditions were made as wretched as possible to terrify the public into compliance.

Amid these circumstances, Covid ripped through some facilities, with deadly results.

One woman detained at Insein said the virus killed her cellmate.

“I was infected. The whole dorm was infected. Everyone lost their sense of smell,” she says.