A court has imposed a 20-year jail sentence on Hla Hla Win, a freelance video reporter who provided material to the Burmese exile broadcaster Democratic Voice of Burma. Detained since September, she was already given a seven-year sentence in October, Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) and Burma Media Association (BMA) have reported.
“People had been expecting signs of an opening and goodwill gestures from the military junta in this election year, but this extremely severe sentence on a 25-year-old video maker and the junta chief’s recent threatening comments leave little hope that the elections will be free,” the two organisations said. “We are outraged that this young woman has been given a 20-year jail term.”
They said, “The very dangerous work carried out by Burma’s video reporters, made famous by the documentary Buma VJ, is crucial for the dissemination of independent, propaganda-free information both domestically and abroad. ASEAN and the rest of the international community should make press freedom one of the conditions for recognising the 2010 elections.”
A senior representative of the Oslo-based Democratic Voice of Burma told Reporters Without Borders that the sentence imposed on Hla Hla Win was “unjust” because all she did was “gather information about the situation in Burma, nothing more.”
At least 13 journalists and bloggers are currently detained in Burma, most of them in very harsh conditions.
The 20-year sentence was imposed on Hla Hla Win by a court in Pakokku (30 km north of the central city of Bagan) on December 31 for an alleged violation of the Electronic Act. A person who was accompanying her at the time of her arrest, Myint Naing, was given a 26-year sentence. The exile media Mizzima said Pakokku-based lawyers were reluctant to defend them in a case of a political nature.
Hla Hla Win was arrested on September 11 after visiting a monastery in Pakokku (Magwe Division) and was given a seven-year sentence the following month under the Export Import Act for using an illegally imported motorcycle. In all, she will now have to serve a combined sentence of 26 years in prison.
Following her arrest, she went on a hunger strike for several days in protest against her detention and had to be hospitalised because her health deteriorated rapidly.
