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Palaung Lawyer Detained After Gambling Den Shooting

December 29, 2017/in News

By LAWI WENG 29 December 2017 An ethnic Ta’ang (Palaung) lawyer has been detained by police in Muse Township in northern Shan State in connection with a shooting in Lashio in Kaung Mu Tong quarter on Dec. 22, Ta’ang Legal Aid (TLA) reported yesterday. Police accused Mai Myo Aung of involvement in a Dec. 22 confrontation in […]

Myanmar Political Prisoners File Complaint With UN Rights Office Over Journalists’ Detention

December 29, 2017/in News

A Myanmar rights organization has filed a complaint with the U.N.’s human rights office about the detention of two Reuters journalists charged with violating the country’s colonial-era Official Secrets Act. The Assistance Association for Political Prisoners (AAPP), a group dedicated to the release of political prisoners in Myanmar, lodged the complaint with the Working Group […]

Palaung Lawyer Detained After Gambling Den Shooting

December 29, 2017/in News

Myanmar Political Prisoners File Complaint With UN Rights Office Over Journalists’ Detention

December 29, 2017/in News

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Palaung Lawyer Detained After Gambling Den Shooting

December 29, 2017/in News

By LAWI WENG 29 December 2017

An ethnic Ta’ang (Palaung) lawyer has been detained by police in Muse Township in northern Shan State in connection with a shooting in Lashio in Kaung Mu Tong quarter on Dec. 22, Ta’ang Legal Aid (TLA) reported yesterday.

Police accused Mai Myo Aung of involvement in a Dec. 22 confrontation in a gambling den that escalated and left one person shot dead and another injured. He is being held at a police station in Muse’s Kaung Mu Tong quarter, the TLA said. The aid group and the man’s wife allege that the police have physically abused the lawyer and refused to release alleged video footage implicating him.

“He was not at the location of the shooting. He was not even aware there had been a shooting. He was at another location on personal business, but the police have accused him of involvement,” said Mai Shein Htun, a TLA committee member who is assisting the lawyer.

In a statement, the TLA said Mai Myo Aung had been beaten while in custody. His only contact with the outside world was through visits by his wife, it said.

“He told us that [police] wearing boots had kicked him and struck him with their guns while interrogating him,” Mai Shein Htun said.

TLA alleged that police assaulted Mai Myo Aung while demanding he provide information about a group of armed men who attacked the gambling den in the 105 Economic Zone in Muse Township. Mai Shein Htun said this was not the first time the man had suffered at the hands of police. “Whenever there is fighting near Muse, the police beat him [for information],” the TLA official said.

TLA representatives were allowed a brief meeting with Mai Myo Aung on Dec. 26 at the police station. Mai Shein Htun said the man showed signs of having been beaten, including bruises on his face.

According to police, on Dec. 22 three people arrived at the gambling den and got into a dispute with security guards. The three people in the car drove away, but returned later on motorbikes and shot the security guards, the police said.

Police allege that Mai Myo Aung was among the three, and that the other two suspects escaped.

Police Captain Aye Myint told The Irrawaddy on Thursday that Muse police have CCTV camera footage showing Mai Myo Aung and the other two suspects, Mai Kyaw Hein and Mai Aie Ohn, in a car.

“Firstly, these three got into a quarrel with security guards near the scene,” he said. “The three suspects were upset with the guards, and went home. They returned to the gambling den on motorbikes and shot the victims,” Aye Myint said.

Police have not provided any evidence to Mai Myo Aung’s family or his lawyer from TLA, despite having detained him based on the alleged CCTV footage. He was arrested at 12:30 p.m. on Dec. 22 after being stopped while driving to another village on personal business. The shooting incident occurred at 11 a.m. that day, police said.

Police have not formally charged the lawyer, but said he would be prosecuted under Penal Code sections 302 and 307. The TLA said the police were treating the suspect as if he had already been convicted, even resorting to physical abuse in an effort to force him to admit involvement in the crime.

Mai Myo Aung is a lawyer who helps TLA provide legal assistance to ethnic minority people who cannot afford their own.

Ei Awa, Mai Myo Aung’s wife, told The Irrawaddy that the police lacked evidence to back up the accusation, adding that he had been arrested some distance from the scene of the shooting. Furthermore, the police initially said the shooting had occurred at a pawnshop, rather than a gambling den, she said.

Ei Awa added that the police insisted she communicate with them in Burmese, rather than in her own Palaung language. She was not allowed to ask her husband for any details about what had occurred, or how he had got to the gambling station.

“I was only allowed to ask him about what he wanted to eat. I was not able to ask him about other issues,” she said. Police were present and monitored her conversation with her husband.

She said she saw a bruise under Mai Myo Aung’s left eye, and added that it was possible he had other injuries elsewhere on his body.

Topics: Conflict, Human Rights

Irrawaddy News

Myanmar Political Prisoners File Complaint With UN Rights Office Over Journalists’ Detention

December 29, 2017/in News

The Assistance Association for Political Prisoners (AAPP), a group dedicated to the release of political prisoners in Myanmar, lodged the complaint with the Working Group on Arbitrary Detention (WGAD) under the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) on Dec. 20, eight days after the arrests of Thet Oo Maung, also known as Wa Lone, and Kyaw Soe Oo.

Police have detained the pair for possessing illegal government documents about security forces in northern Rakhine state, where a military crackdown has driven hundreds of thousands of Rohingya Muslims into neighboring Bangladesh. They also have been accused of sending “important security documents regarding security forces in Rakhine state to foreign agencies abroad.”

“We sent it [the complaint] because the arrest of two Reuters journalists violates Article 347 of Myanmar’s Constitution as well as Articles 9, 14, 19, and 26 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights,” AAPP spokesman Myo Kyaw told RFA’s Myanmar Service on Thursday.

Article 347 of Myanmar’s 2008 Constitution guarantees equal rights and equal protection before the law.

The international covenant is a multilateral treat adopted by the U.N. General Assembly in December 1966 and put into force on March 23, 1976, which sets forth the rights of individuals who have been arrested and detained and ensures them the right to freedom of expression.

The Working Group looks into information submitted by NGOs, individuals, their families, or their representatives concerning the protection of human rights in alleged cases of arbitrary detention.

If it determines that an arbitrary deprivation of liberty has occurred, it issues an opinion to that effect and makes recommendations to the relevant government, which is given 60 days to respond to the allegations in terms of facts, applicable laws, and the outcome of any investigations that have been ordered.

On Wednesday, a courthouse in Yangon’s Mingaladon township extended the detention of the two Reuters journalists by two weeks at their first hearing following 15 days of interrogation by police.

They are being held in Insein Prison on the outskirts of the commercial capital until their next court appearance on Jan. 10.

If they are found guilty of violating the Official Secrets Act, they could face up to 14 years in jail.

A question of entrapment

The two received the documents during a meeting in Yangon with two policemen who had been stationed in northern Rakhine. Though the two policemen with whom the journalists met just before their arrests were also taken into custody, they have not been charged.

A few days after the arrests, President Htin Kyaw issued an approval for police to proceed with the case against the journalists.

Yet on Dec. 18, the spokesman of the ruling National League of Democracy (NLD) party described the arrests as “entrapment” because Thet Oo Maung and Kyaw Soe Oo had been apprehended with the documents shortly after they finished their meal with the two officers.

But Thant Zin Aung, the attorney representing the journalists, said he doubts whether the arrests constitute entrapment.

“I have doubts about whether it is entrapment,” he said on Thursday. “I have many things to talk about because we have been studying this case, and we learned new facts today, but I can’t say what we’ve got now.”

Thet Oo Maung’s wife Pan Ei Mon on Thursday insisted that her husband had not done anything illegal during the course of his reporting.

“I know my husband hasn’t done anything against the law,” she told RFA. “I am just waiting for his release, but I don’t know what to say.”

The case has struck fear in the media in Myanmar, where a series of arrests of journalists or editors and defamation lawsuits against the media has taken place under the civilian-led government of de facto leader Aung San Suu Kyi.

“What I think is that authorities have threatened other journalists that they will act the same way if those journalists do what they don’t want them to do,” said Zayar Hlaing, editor of Mawkun Magazine, an investigative publication owned by the Yangon-based Myanmar Observer Media Group.

“We see their arrest as entrapment because they met the policemen, got papers from them, and then they were arrested soon after these policemen left them,” he said. “They have been charged under the Official Secrets Act only because the police found these papers on them.”

“It is a lie, and it is as if the police are stirring up a battle between the media and the people,” he said.

Thein Than Oo, an attorney with the Myanmar Lawyers’ Network, said the government has handled the situation poorly and agreed that journalists have a right to access information.

“First, the Ministry of Information didn’t follow journalism ethics when it published news about these journalists in the newspaper,” he said. “Second, it is not a crime when journalists work to cover news. They have the right to access information.”

Also on Thursday, a group of 50 Pulitzer Prize-winning journalists called on authorities in Myanmar to immediately release the two reporters.

“Their arrest is an outrageous attack on media freedom,” said a joint statement issued by the group. Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo are brave, principled and professional journalists who were working in the public interest and were jailed simply for doing their jobs.”

“We call on the Myanmar government to immediately release Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo, reunite them with their families, and drop all charges against them.”

myanmar-journalist-aung-naing-soe-driver-hla-tin-naypyiday-nov10-2017-400.jpg

Myanmar interpreter Aung Naing Soe (L) and driver Hla Tin (R) look out from a prison transport vehicle after they are sentenced to two months in prison for illegally flying a drone, in a court in Naypyidaw, Nov. 10, 2017. Credit: AFP

Charges against others dropped

Meanwhile, a Myanmar court on Thursday formally dropped additional charges against two foreign journalists who have been serving time since their arrest in October for illegally flying a drone over the parliament building in Naypyidaw.

Singaporean journalist Lau Hon Meng, and Malaysian journalist Mok Choy Lin, their Myanmar interpreter, Aung Naing Soe, and driver, Hla Tin, were arrested on Oct. 27 as they worked on a documentary for Turkish Radio and Television Corporation subsidiary TRT World.

They are all serving two months in jail for violating Myanmar’s colonial-era Aircraft Act and are scheduled for release on Jan. 5.

Naypyidaw’s Zabuthiri township court had also charged them with illegally bringing a drone into Myanmar under the 2012 Import-Export Act, and the two journalists were further charged with violating Myanmar’s Immigration Act on Nov. 27, after their visas expired while they were in custody.

On Tuesday, Myanmar police withdrew the additional charges related to the importation of the drone and immigration violations.

Domestic and international rights groups have criticized the NLD government for appearing to backpedal on press freedom in the still-developing democracy.

Myanmar ranks 131 of a total 180 countries in the latest World Press Freedom Index issued by the Paris-based group Reporters Without Borders (RSF), an NGO that promotes and defends freedom of information and freedom of the press.

Reported by Tin Aung Khine, Win Ko Ko Latt, and Khin Khin Ei for RFA’s Myanmar Service. Translated by Khet Mar. Written in English by Roseanne Gerin.

RFA

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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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