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Military kills civilian in poor health at Sagaing Region checkpoint

September 7, 2023/in News

Junta soldiers fatally shot a man at a checkpoint in Shwebo, central Sagaing Region on Monday as he was returning from a trip to Mandalay for medical treatment, local sources said. The victim was Paw Tun, 60, a resident of the village of Pin Hla in Kawlin Township. He was suffering from lung disease and […]

Junta sentences Myanmar Now photo journalist to 20 years in prison

September 6, 2023/in News

A military tribunal in Yangon sentenced a photojournalist to 20 years in prison with hard labour on Wednesday after convicting him on various charges, including sedition. Junta soldiers arrested Sai Zaw Thaike of independent news outlet Myanmar Now in the Rakhine State capital of Sittwe on May 23, just over a week after Cyclone Mocha […]

Military kills civilian in poor health at Sagaing Region checkpoint

September 7, 2023/in News

Junta sentences Myanmar Now photo journalist to 20 years in prison

September 6, 2023/in News

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Military kills civilian in poor health at Sagaing Region checkpoint

September 7, 2023/in News

Junta soldiers fatally shot a man at a checkpoint in Shwebo, central Sagaing Region on Monday as he was returning from a trip to Mandalay for medical treatment, local sources said.

The victim was Paw Tun, 60, a resident of the village of Pin Hla in Kawlin Township. He was suffering from lung disease and had gone to Mandalay to receive care.

The soldiers started firing their weapons at a motorcyclist who was trying to flee the checkpoint on the south side of Shwebo, and a stray round hit the parked car in which Paw Tun was sitting in a passenger seat.

“He died on the spot. A bullet hit him in the head, on the right side. Soldiers had failed to stop the motorcycle at the previous two checkpoints, so they fired when it reached the third one, but the bullet ended up hitting the car instead,” said a local man who had helped move the victim’s body.

The car’s driver was also injured by broken glass.

All travellers passing through military checkpoints are required to get out of their vehicles one by one and present their National Registration Cards to soldiers for examination. However, Paw Tun had remained in the car due to his ill health.

Paw Tun’s body was taken to the mortuary in Shwebo by junta troops. The next day, a woman who had been with the victim went back to Kawlin Township with his body.

According to a spokesperson for the Shwebo Township People’s Defense Team (PDT), the fleeing motorcyclist escaped without injury.

The military will not admit any fault for shooting in an area with crowds of civilians nearby, the PDT spokesperson said.

“The terrorist military council’s action is totally unacceptable. They will not take any responsibility. They shot and killed him for no reason on a main street where innocent civilians were traveling in and out of town,” he said.

After seizing power in the 2021 coup, the military set up checkpoints on highways and roads throughout Myanmar. Motorcyclists are not allowed to ride through these checkpoints, but are instead required to dismount and push the vehicles through before proceeding.

According to a rule enforced by the military council in Sagaing Region, men are not permitted to ride on a motorcycle two at a time, although a woman may ride on a motorcycle while a man is driving. However, in this instance there was reportedly only one rider on the motorcycle, and he was therefore not in violation of the rule.

The day after Paw Tun was killed, the bodies of two local people were found in the village of Bone Bweit just five miles south of Shwebo on the Shwebo-Mandalay road, shortly after a military column left the area.

In its military campaigns against Myanmar’s armed resistance after the 2021 coup, the regime has frequently targeted civilians. As of August 2023, a total of 4,043 people had been killed in Myanmar since the coup, according to data collected by the human rights monitoring group Assistance Association for Political Prisoners.

Myanmar Now News

Junta sentences Myanmar Now photo journalist to 20 years in prison

September 6, 2023/in News

A military tribunal in Yangon sentenced a photojournalist to 20 years in prison with hard labour on Wednesday after convicting him on various charges, including sedition.

Junta soldiers arrested Sai Zaw Thaike of independent news outlet Myanmar Now in the Rakhine State capital of Sittwe on May 23, just over a week after Cyclone Mocha made landfall.

The 40-year-old photojournalist was in the city to report on the aftermath of the storm, which killed over 140 people, many of whom were members of the persecuted Rohingya minority living in camps for internally displaced persons.

Following the arrest, authorities subjected Sai Zaw Thaike to interrogation for about a week in Sittwe and Yangon. He was transferred to Yangon’s notorious Insein Prison in mid-June on a remand issued by the township court in South Dagon, which has been under martial law since 2021.

His initial indictment included charges for misinformation, incitement, and sedition under various statutes–article 27 of the Natural Disaster Management Law, section 66(d) of the Telecommunications Law, and sections 505a and 124a of the colonial-era Penal Code–which carry sentences varying from one to 20 years.

However, the number of charges on which the junta court ultimately convicted him is unconfirmed.

Sai Zaw Thaike was provided with no legal representation throughout his detention. There were no court hearings or other proceedings held inside the Insein Prison compound before his conviction on Wednesday.

He was not allowed family visits at any time after his arrest in late May, and prison authorities restricted mail and parcel deliveries addressed to him, as they have for other prisoners throughout the country.

“All of Sai Zaw Thaike’s colleagues at Myanmar Now and I are deeply saddened to hear of the lengthy sentence handed down to him,” said Myanmar Now’s editor-in-chief Swe Win.

“His sentencing is yet another indication that freedom of the press has been completely quashed under the military junta’s rule, and shows the hefty price independent journalists in Myanmar must pay for their professional work,” he said in a statement.

Sai Zaw Thaike is the second Myanmar Now journalist who has been arrested by military authorities since the 2021 coup. Video journalist Kay Zon Nway was arrested while covering an anti-coup protest in Yangon in late February of that year, and was later released as part of a broader amnesty on June 30.

A week after Kay Zon Nway’s arrest, junta soldiers raided Myanmar Now’s office in downtown Yangon. No reporters or staff were present at the time of the raid.

The next day, the junta revoked the news outlet’s publishing licence along with those of four other media organisations. Since then, Sai Zaw Thaike continued to work covertly inside Myanmar, reporting on anti-coup activities in Yangon and beyond.

“We will not waiver in our commitment to continue providing news and information to the people of Myanmar, despite the immense challenges we are facing,” said Swe Win.

The junta has been targeting news outlets and journalists in an attempt to silence independent reporting on conditions in the country since the coup.

According to documentation by the media rights monitoring group Detained Journalists Information, at least 156 journalists were arrested after the military takeover, of whom at least 50 were still behind bars as of May of this year. The group said that the actual number of arrested journalists could be higher.

Myanmar Now is one of 13 news outlets whose publishing licences the junta revoked, and four media personnel have been killed.

Most of the journalists detained by the regime were charged with incitement under section 505a of the Penal Code, while others were charged under terrorism statutes.

Sithu Aung Myint, a columnist for Frontier Myanmar and contributor to Voice of America, was charged with sedition as well as incitement after being arrested along with fellow journalist Htet Htet Khine at a Yangon apartment on August 15, six months after the coup.

Sithu Aung Myint had been evading arrest since April 24, when the coup regime accused him of incitement and opened a legal case against him. The junta-controlled newspaper Global New Light of Myanmar claimed after his arrest that Sithu Aung Myint had supported “terrorist groups”, encouraging people to join the Civil Disobedience Movement and spread “fake news” about a junta-controlled lottery scheme.

He was sentenced to a total of 12 years under incitement and sedition charges last year.

Myanmar Now News

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ND Burma

ND-Burma formed in 2004 in order to provide a way for Burma human rights organizations to collaborate on the human rights documentation process. The 13 ND-Burma member organizations seek to collectively use the truth of what communities in Burma have endured to advocate for justice for victims. ND-Burma trains local organizations in human rights documentation; coordinates members’ input into a common database using Martus, a secure open-source software; and engages in joint-advocacy campaigns.

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