Bought a painting, bribed a police officer and covered up a Buddha tattoo: Man reveals how he avoided being beaten to death in a Myanmar prison |

Going to Myanmar wasn’t just another trip for Arnold Putra, it was a trajectory where he took each step with caution. For years, he had been visiting the country but this time, he decided to spend some time with student groups. He bought them pints of beer to enjoy along and at the time he didn’t think he had done anything wrong.But according to the junta, the country’s military government, students are classified as terrorists. “If they don’t go to the police station and report their own friends, they get a minimum of five years [in jail],” he said to VICE. It was in 2025, when Putra was there for the Nat Pwe spirit festival and on his last night he was approached by a girl he knew on Instagram, saying “Let’s go out.”Since he had a 6 AM flight, he declined the offer, having no idea that she was the general’s daughter. “She showed up at my hotel and convinced me to go out for one drink. She took me to this tiny bar with three tables,” he shared. When he saw her consuming drugs he decided to leave but soon four police officers arrived in plainclothes and said, “Come with us. We want to ask you some questions.”

Time in jail

He ended up in military intel, trying to convince the authorities that he wasn’t guilty.

Soon, he ended up in military intel, trying to convince the authorities that he wasn’t guilty. He even tried bribing them but all they wanted from him was a confession that he was aiding the rebels. “Then, two days later, they said, “OK, pack your bags, you’re going to the embassy.” I was like, “Thank you, guys, so much!”What he deemed a release, ended up in another cell where the authorities told him to get some rest since he was at the start of a seven-year hard labour sentence.

A Buddha tattoo and a life saved

“The image of Buddha is so holy it’s not allowed on the human body, which my tattoo artist in LA obviously didn’t know when we pulled one off Google,” said Putra.

Before he was arrested, Putra was in Bagan. There, a guy selling paintings who told him that it is not allowed to have tattoos of Buddhas in the country and it could get him in serious trouble. The man kept following him everywhere and threatened to tell the Minister of Information about his tattoo to get him deported. He ended up buying a painting from him, and that was his first foreboding about the time ahead.In the jail cell, people who had already been to the maximum security prison said that on the first day, they check a person’s entire body and make them explain each tattoo. “I didn’t believe them, but it was actually the case,” he said.According to Putra, Buddhism in Myanmar right now is super sensitive. “The image of Buddha is so holy it’s not allowed on the human body, which my tattoo artist in LA obviously didn’t know when we pulled one off Google,” he said.A staffer from the Indonesian embassy came to visit him and assured him that they would get the Buddha tattoo removed. “Don’t worry, there’s a tattoo artist working in the embassy, and he’s good. You just have to pay the police chief to turn the head office into a tattoo studio for one day. You’re gonna get killed in prison if you don’t change your tattoo,” he said to Putra.The police chief charged him with his three years’ salary to let them use his office. The tattoo artist surveyed his tattoo and said he would convert it into a girl with shades. But Putra decided he wanted to turn it into a koala emoji and asked for that. “He scraped me with a shaver and rubbed me with this alcohol, which was more painful than any tattoo I’ve gotten. I was like, is this actually how it’s gonna feel, the whole cover-up? Because this guy doesn’t know what he’s doing. Then he tattooed me for four hours,” shared Putra.

The much-needed escape

Putra is a controversial Indonesian influencer who went viral for creating a bag with the child’s spine. He revealed that the cell he lived in at Yangon’s Insein Prison, had cockroaches swimming in the water that he showered in and rats falling on him as he slept. He just hoped that his tattoo wouldn’t get infected, which it didn’t. “The guys who saw my tattoo afterwards in the cell were like, ‘Oh, wow.'”While he was transferred to a maximum security prison, after some months, his government got him out and free.