The Burmese government has been warned by a UN body that its sentencing of two journalists working for the Democratic Voice of Burma is arbitrary, and now faces high-level calls for their release.
21 year old Sithu Zeya and his father, U Zeya, were handed lengthy sentences last year after Burmese intelligence discovered they had been working for DVB. Sithu Zeya was arrested after being caught filming the aftermath of the Rangoon grenade attacks in April 2010; under torture, he revealed that his father was also a DVB video journalist.
A five-page opinion adopted by the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention found that their sentencing was in violation of articles 19 and 20 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which cover freedom of expression and assembly.
In August Sithu Zeya had his sentence extended by a decade after he was found guilty of breaching the Electronics Act, which has been used by the government on numerous occasions to target journalists feeding footage to foreign and exiled media organisations. He is now due to serve 18 years behind bars. The mother of Sithu Zeya reported shortly after his arrest last year that he had been beaten and denied food for two days whilst being interrogated. In January 17 inmates in the same Insein prison ward that Sithu Zeya was being held in began protesting the 21-year-old’s ill treatment by authorities, which included being held in solitary confinement and acts of public humiliation.
U Zeya was given a 13-year term on the same raft of charges his son was sentenced under, and is currently being held in Hsipaw prison in Shan state.
The two are among around 1,700 political prisoners in Burma, including politicians, monks, doctors and lawyers. Some are serving sentences of more than 100 years for their activism, although Naypyidaw refuses to acknowledge that it has jailed anyone on ‘political’ charges. At present 14 journalists who worked for DVB are behind bars in Burma, down from a total of 17 following a prisoner amnesty in October.
Fellow DVB reporter Win Maw, who is serving a 17-year sentence in Kyaukphyu prison in westernmost Burma, was recently awarded the prestigious Freedom to Create Imprisoned Artists Prize 2011. As well as his work in journalism, Win Maw is a recognised singer/songwriter whose compositions were used in the Oscar-nominated Burma VJ.