A Myanmar journalist who reported on anti-junta protests has been jailed for three years for incitement, his information organisation stated, whereas authorities on Thursday introduced a twice-arrested Japanese reporter could be freed.
Min Nyo, who labored for the Democratic Voice of Burma (DVB) in Myanmar’s Bago area, was arrested on March 3 and located responsible by a navy court docket on Wednesday in one of many first verdicts in opposition to media staff because the Feb. 1 navy coup.
“DVB calls for the navy authority launch Min Nyo instantly, as properly as different detained or convicted journalists round Myanmar,” it said.
He had been beaten by police and denied visits by his family, it said.
In its nightly news bulletin, state-run MRTV said another journalist, Yuki Kitazumi, who was charged under the same law as Min Nyo, had broken the law but would be released as recognition of Myanmar’s close relationship with Japan.
Kitazumi, who runs a media company in Yangon, was arrested on April 19 for the second time since the coup and was the first foreign journalist charged.
Japan was a big investor and source of technical help and development aid for Myanmar’s semi-civilian governments in the decade of democracy and reform that followed the end of the last era of military rule in 2011.
Myanmar has been in turmoil since the coup, with the military struggling to impose order amid a groundswell of public anger at its overthrow of Aung San Suu Kyi’s elected government.
Many journalists are among the nearly 4,900 people who have been arrested, according to the Association for Political Prisoners (AAPP) advocacy group.
DVB is among several news outlets that have had licenses revoked by the military, which has restricted internet access and used lethal force to suppress countrywide strikes and protests against it. More than 780 people have been killed by security forces, according to AAPP figures.
Three of DVB’s journalists were detained in northern Thailand this week for illegal entry after fleeing Myanmar. Human rights groups have pleaded with Thailand not to deport them.
Emerlynne Gil, Amnesty International’s Deputy Regional Director, said journalism had effectively been criminalised by Myanmar’s generals.
“They risk life and liberty to shed light on the military’s abuses. The military authorities are ruthless, determined to crush dissent by silencing those who seek to expose their crimes,” Gil stated in a press release.
Resistance to the junta has intensified in current weeks, with hostilities reigniting between the navy and a number of other ethnic minority armies, deadly assaults on junta-appointed directors, and ambushes of police and troopers by militias calling themselves People’s Defence Forces.
MRTV introduced on Thursday that martial legislation had been declared due to unrest in Mindut in northwestern Chin State. Resistance teams there say there was heavy combating between armed civilians and junta troops.
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