Myanmar’s junta cuts filmmaker’s life sentence to 15 years as part of wider amnesty

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Shin Daewe had been convicted of violating the country’s Anti-terrorism Law.

Myanmar’s junta has reduced the sentence of journalist and award-winning documentary filmmaker Shin Daewe from life behind bars to 15 years as part of a larger prisoner amnesty, her family said Thursday.

On Jan. 5, the junta announced that it had shortened the life sentences of 144 people to 15 years in prison to mark the 77th anniversary of Myanmar’s independence from British colonial rule a day earlier.

The reduction was part of a broader amnesty that saw the junta release more than 6,000 inmates, although that number included just a small share of the hundreds of political prisoners jailed for opposing the military’s February 2021 coup d’etat.

Family members confirmed to RFA Burmese on Thursday that Shin Daewe, 50, was among 14 of 48 people serving life sentences in Yangon’s notorious Insein Prison who were included in the amnesty.

Known for her work highlighting the challenges facing Myanmar’s environment and the impact of conflict on civilians following the coup, Shin Daewe was arrested on Oct. 15 in Yangon’s North Okkalapa township while picking up a video drone that her husband says she had ordered online to use in filming a documentary.

She was later sentenced to life in prison by the Insein Prison Special Court on Jan. 10, 2024, for violating Myanmar’s Anti-terrorism Law, prompting an outcry from rights groups and members of the media.

Shin Daewe’s husband, Ko Oo told RFA at the time that police had interrogated her for nearly two weeks before charging her and transferring her to Insein Prison, adding that it appeared she had been tortured.

Prolific documentarian

Shin Daewe served as a journalist for the independent Democratic Voice of Burma during Myanmar’s 2007 Saffron Revolution, when the military violently suppressed widespread anti-government protests led by Buddhist monks.

She later released a documentary that helped bring global attention to the revolution — named for the monk’s saffron-colored robes — and ensuing crackdown.

Beginning in 2010, Shin Daewe began making documentaries full time, several of which went on to win awards at local and international film festivals.

In 2013, her documentary “Now I Am 13,” about the life of an uneducated teenage girl in central Myanmar, won a silver medal at the Kota Kinab International Film Festival and won the Best Documentary Award at the Wathann Film Festival a year later.

Other documentaries, including “Brighter Future,” about the Phong Taw Oo monastic education center; “Rahula,” which portrays the story of a sculptor from Mandalay; and “Take Me Home,” about a camp for internally displaced ethnic Kachins, also received recognition at various festivals.

Observers had labeled Shin Daewe’s sentencing part of a bid by the junta to stamp out criticism by using lengthy jail terms to instill fear in opponents.

Shortly after the ruling, the International Coalition for Filmmakers at Risk, the International Film Festival Rotterdam, the International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam, and the European Film Academy issued a joint statement calling for Shin Daewe’s immediate release.

Before the coup, Myanmar ranked 139th out of 180 countries in Reporters Without Borders’ annual press freedom index, but dropped to 171st in the media watchdog’s latest rankings – up slightly from 173rd a year ago, which was the worst in the country’s history.

RFA News

Close The Sky

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Blood Money Campaign published the research report on 8 Jan 2025.
” Close The Sky : The Dire Consequences of inaction on Aviation Fuel in Myanmar”

2-The Dire Consequences of inaction on aviation fuel in Myanmar Report_OptimizeDownload

International condemnation of the escalating humanitarian crisis and rights violations in Myanmar

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Mizzima

The High Representative released a joint statement on 6 January on behalf of the European Union and the governments of the United States, Australia, Canada, New Zealand, Norway, the Republic of Korea, Switzerland, Timor-Leste, and the United Kingdom. This statement expresses deep concern regarding the worsening human rights and humanitarian crisis in Myanmar.

The text of the statement is as follows.

We are deeply concerned by the worsening human rights and humanitarian crisis across Myanmar. This crisis is exacerbated by the escalation of violence, as well as intercommunal tension. The regime’s ongoing and violent repression of the people of Myanmar is unacceptable.

There are credible reports of human rights violations and abuses and international humanitarian law violations committed against civilians. These include: abduction and forced recruitment of children and members of ethnic and religious minorities; the Myanmar military’s indiscriminate aerial bombardments that kill and injure civilians and damage civilian infrastructure; sexual and gender-based violence; the burning of homes; attacks on humanitarian workers and facilities; and restrictions on humanitarian access by the military regime and various armed groups. We have also seen disturbing reports of dismemberment and burning of civilians.

The intensification of the conflict in Rakhine State and the suffering experienced by all communities there, including Rohingya, is deeply concerning. The reports of violations of international law targeting Rohingya, in addition to the military’s history of stoking intercommunal tensions in Rakhine State and elsewhere across the country, underscore the grave dangers to civilians.

We are troubled by the lack of safe areas for civilians to escape the conflict and attacks on civilians fleeing the violence across Myanmar. Humanitarian needs have increased due to the conflict and been exacerbated by the regime’s denial of humanitarian access. The ongoing conflict has resulted in the displacement of more than 3.5 million people, some of whom have fled the country. More than 15 million people now face acute food insecurity. Disease outbreak, including cholera, is on the rise while access constraints inhibit the delivery of medical assistance.

We urge the military regime and all armed actors in Myanmar to de-escalate violence, respect international humanitarian law and international human rights laws, protect civilians, and allow full, safe, and unimpeded humanitarian access so that life-saving aid can be provided to all people in need, including women, children, and members of ethnic and minority populations. We emphasize that addressing the underlying discrimination and brutal treatment faced by Rohingya must be a part of a political solution to the crisis in Myanmar.

We again urge the implementation of UNSC resolution 2669 (2022) which called for the immediate end to all forms of violence in Myanmar and urged restraint, the de-escalation of tensions, and the release of all arbitrarily detained prisoners.

We reiterate our full support for ASEAN’s central role in finding a resolution to the crisis, including the work of the ASEAN Chair and Special Envoy, consistent with the Five Point Consensus, and acknowledge the important role of the UN Secretary-General’s Special Envoy on Myanmar.

We continue to support calls for genuine, constructive, and inclusive dialogue to find a peaceful solution to the situation in Myanmar and a return to the path of inclusive democracy.

Women in Karenni State face increasing levels of violence

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Three civilians were killed by airstrikes at the Sin-Sakhan (Elephant) Internally Displaced Persons (IDP) camp in Loikaw Township of Karenni State on Tuesday. 

“They deliberately targeted this area,” said a spokesperson from Jobs For Kayah, a group providing humanitarian aid at IDP camps in Karenni State.

The victims included a 40-year-old woman who was killed instantly, along with a woman and child who died after receiving medical treatment for their wounds sustained during three reported airstrikes.

An airstrike was also carried out in Demoso Township, 10 miles (16 km) south of the Karenni State capital Loikaw, on Dec. 31. There were no reported casualties, according to local aid groups.

The Institute for Strategy and Policy – Myanmar (ISP-Myanmar), an independent conflict monitor, stated that the military has conducted over 7,000 airstrikes on more than 150 townships in Myanmar since the 2021 coup.

It added that there have been approximately 2,000 civilian casualties caused by airstrikes. The number of civilians killed in Karenni State is unknown, but this level of violence inflicted on IDPs by the military over the last three years of conflict – since the uprising to the 2021 coup began – has caused collective trauma.

The Karenni National Women’s Organization (KNWO) reported that domestic violence cases have doubled in 2024 compared to pre-2021 levels, with 101 documented incidents in the last 12 months that include physical violence, psychological abuse, and sexual assault.

“Domestic violence cases have significantly increased since the military coup. The economic hardships faced by displaced families have contributed to rising tensions within households,” said Maw Byar Mar Oo, the KNWO vice president. 

Approximately 200,000 civilians – over half of Karenni State’s population – are currently displaced from their homes due to the conflict and are staying temporarily in IDP camps. 

“I’ve witnessed children being abused despite their innocence. Married couples fight because we can’t make ends meet. We’re truly jobless here. Many of us can’t access our farmlands anymore. We have no fields, no crops, nothing,” said a woman who was displaced from her home in Karenni State.

Aid workers and women’s rights groups have reported that the psychological impact of airstrikes on the local civilian population staying at IDP camps has caused the levels of domestic violence against women and children to escalate rapidly since 2021.

DVB News

Reparation (Cartoon Animation)

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အခြေခံအယူအဆ
• အသွင်ကူးပြောင်းရေးဆိုင်ရာ တရားမျှမှု (TJ) လုပ်ငန်းစဥ်များထဲမှာ တခုမှာ “ပြန်လည်ကုစားပေး လျော်မှု (Reparation)” ဖြစ်သည်။

• ပြန်လည်ကုစားပေးလျော်မှုကို အတိတ်ကာလက လူ့အခွင့်အရေး အကြီးအကျယ်ချိုးဖောက်ခံ ရသူများ နှင့် ၎င်းတို့၏ မိသားစုများအတွက် နစ်နာခဲ့မှုများကို အသိအမှတ်ပြုကာ ကုစားပေး ခြင်းဖြစ်သည်။

• ပြန်လည်ကုစားပေးလျော်မှု (Reparation) ကို နစ်နာသူ တဦးချင်းကို ပေးအပ်ခြင်းနှင့် နစ်နာသူ လူအုပ်စုအလိုက် ပေးအပ်ခြင်းမျိုး ဆောင်ရွက်လေ့ရှိသည်။

• ပြန်လည်ကုစားပေးလျော်မှုကို အသွင်ကူးပြောင်းရေးကာလတွင် တရားဝင်ဖွဲ့စည်းပေးသည့် အမှန်တ ရားနှင့်ပြန်လည်သင့်မြတ်ရေးကော်မရှင် (TRC) များ၏ တွေ့ရှိချက်နှင့် အကြံပြုချက် များအပေါ် အခြေခံ၍ နစ်နာသူများအပေါ် သက်ဆိုင်ရာ အစိုးရများက ဆောင် ရွက်ပေးကြ သည်။ ပြန်လည်ကုစားပေးလျော်မှု (Reparation) အမျိုးအစားများမှာ-

• ပေးလျော်ခြင်း (Compensation) • ပြည်လည်ဖြည့်ဆည်းပေးခြင်း (Restitution)

• ပြန်လည်ထူထောင်ပေးခြင်း (Rehabilitation)

• ကျေနပ်နှစ်သိမ့်မှု (Satisfaction) (အသိအမှတ်ပြုခြင်း၊ အထိမ်းအမှတ် အမှတ်တရများ စိုက်ထူခြင်း၊ ပြတိုက်များ တည်ဆောက်ပြသခြင်း)။

UN Secretary General: Act Now To Prevent Famine in Rakhine State

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Burma Campaign UK is urging UN Secretary General António Guterres to travel to Bangladesh to negotiate the opening of aid and trade routes into Rakhine State, Burma.

In November the United Nations Development Programme warned of impending famine in Rakhine State.

  • 2 million people face starvation.
  • 95% of the population will be living in ‘survival mode’
  • The state is expected to produce only 20% of the food it needs.
  • There is already a crisis, with well over 600,000 people displaced.

The aid and trade embargo imposed by the Burmese military on areas of Rakhine State which it no longer occupies is a deliberate tactic to use starvation as a tool of oppression.

Rakhine State (also known as Arakan State) is in western Burma, bordering Bangladesh in the North. The largest ethnic group there are Rakhine, but many ethnic and religious minorities live there, including the Rohingya.

The Arakha Army, mostly made up of ethnic Rakhine people, has been fighting to free the state from Burmese military rule and has taken over large parts of the state. The Burmese military have used every tactic they can to try to weaken resistance to their occupation of Rakhine State. They have launched indiscriminate airstrikes and artillery attacks, exploited ethnic and religious tensions to try to divide and rule, and placed strict restrictions on aid and trade, including medicines, seeds and fertiliser, into the areas where they have lost control.

By spring 2025 it is predicted the state will only produce 20% of the food it needs. This is on top of well over 600,000 people who have already fled their homes and jobs (1). Around 250,000 of those are Rohingya, many of whom have fled not just attacks by the Burmese military, but also attacks by the Arakha Army. The Burmese military-imposed trade embargo is creating mass unemployment, and blocking essentials like medicine and agricultural supplies.

The personal intervention of the UN Secretary General provides the best hope of garnering momentum for the significant changes in approach that are required. A business-as-usual approach to this crisis, delegating responsibility to UN agencies or envoys, will not work. It hasn’t worked in the past regarding previous crises. There is no evidential basis to believe this time will be any different.

Trying to negotiate with the Burmese military to allow greater humanitarian access and lift trade restrictions into the areas of Rakhine State now administered by the Arakha Army will not succeed in alleviating this crisis.

The Burmese military is already placing some of the most severe restrictions and conditions on humanitarian aid seen anywhere in the world. These restrictions violate international law. The Burmese military will attempt to leverage the maximum advantage from the process of negotiations, forcing UN and other agencies to submit to extreme conditionality for the sake of limited access.

Instead, a humanitarian corridor from Bangladesh needs to be opened. This should already have happened months ago in response to the growing number of internally displaced people.

“Two million people face starvation, but with political will this is preventable,” said Mark Farmaner, Director of Burma Campaign UK. “Preventing an impending crisis like this is exactly what the role of the UN Secretary General is for. The United Nations and international community have a track record of failing to act to prevent crises in Burma. Will the UN Secretary General António Guterres allow famine to happen in the same state where the UN failed to act on warnings of Rohingya genocide?”

Burma Campaign UK has launched a petition to UN Secretary General António Guterres calling on him to travel to Bangladesh to open negotiations for aid and trade corridors into Rakhine State.

Burma Camping UK