{"id":17902,"date":"2018-10-10T15:26:52","date_gmt":"2018-10-10T15:26:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=17902"},"modified":"2018-10-10T15:26:52","modified_gmt":"2018-10-10T15:26:52","slug":"myanmar-arrests-three-journalists-over-article-on-suu-kyi-protege","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=17902","title":{"rendered":"Myanmar arrests three journalists over article on Suu Kyi protege"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Myanmar<\/a> police have arrested three journalists after their paper criticised the financial management of Yangon’s government, which is overseen by a protege of leader Aung San Suu Kyi<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Eleven Media’s executive editors Kyaw Zaw Lin and Nayi Min, as well as chief reporter Phyo Wai Win, were brought before a Yangon court in handcuffs on Wednesday morning to hear the charges against them before being taken to jail.<\/p>\n

Defence lawyer Kyee Myint told AFP news agency the case was filed over an article published on Monday about the funding behind the city’s bus network, a scheme run by Yangon chief minister and Aung San Suu Kyi confidant Phyo Min Thein.<\/p>\n

“All three of them were sent to Insein prison this morning after a case was filed against them under section 505(b),” Myint said.<\/p>\n

The trio could be fined and jailed for up to two years if a court rules that their story was published with intent to cause – or was likely to cause – “fear or alarm to the public”.<\/p>\n

It is not the first time<\/a> Eleven Media Group has been targeted by the authorities.<\/p>\n

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\nThe next hearing will be on October 17<\/span>\u00a0[Ann Wang\/Reuters]<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

In November 2016, the paper’s then editors were jailed over a column that accused a government official of receiving a watch worth $100,000 from a businessman who later won plum contracts.<\/p>\n

Yangon authorities told AFP they were unable to comment on the latest charges at this stage.<\/p>\n

The next hearing will be on October 17.<\/p>\n

‘Media under threat’<\/strong><\/h2>\n

Their arrest is an “affront to press freedom” and a sign the government is “close to becoming an authoritarian regime,” Ravi R Prasad from the Vienna-based International Press Institute said.<\/p>\n

“The whole media industry is under threat,” said Hlaing Thit Zin Wai, founder of the Protection Committee for Myanmar Journalists.<\/p>\n

“I even have a bag packed at home as we cannot predict when it will be our turn,” he said.<\/p>\n

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<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
\nThe trio could be fined and jailed for up to two years\u00a0<\/span>[Ann Wang\/Reuters]<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

The arrests came just a few weeks after the sentencing of two Reuters journalists<\/a> to seven years in jail at the end of what was widely seen as a sham trial, during which a police officer testified that they had been set up.<\/p>\n

Wa Lone, 32, and Kyaw Soe Oo, 28, had been investigating the extrajudicial killing of Rohingya men during a violent military crackdown last year against the stateless minority.<\/p>\n

Civilian leader Aung San Suu Kyi – a figure once lionised by the international community for her commitment to human rights – has been criticised over the jailing, with the United Nations<\/a> blasting Myanmar for waging “a political campaign against independent journalism”.<\/p>\n

In an interview with Japanese news outlet NHK published on Tuesday, Aung San Suu Kyi said “there is a lot of press freedom in Myanmar”, and suggested that those criticising her government “study what the press is doing from day to day in the country”.<\/p>\n

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The journalists were sent to Insein jail after their court appearance [Ann Wang\/Reuters]<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Myanmar police have arrested three journalists after their paper criticised the financial management of Yangon’s government, which is overseen by a protege of leader Aung San Suu Kyi. Eleven Media’s executive editors Kyaw Zaw Lin and Nayi Min, as well as chief reporter Phyo Wai Win, were brought before a Yangon court in handcuffs on…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":17903,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-17902","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-middle_east_news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17902","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=17902"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17902\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/17903"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=17902"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=17902"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=17902"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}