New York, April 4, 2006—The Committee to Protect Journalists condemns the arrest and summary trial of two journalists accused of filming the countryside from a public bus outside Burma’s controversial new capital. Ko Thar Cho, a photojournalist, and Ko Kyaw Thwin, a columnist at the Burmese-language magazine Dhamah Yate, were arrested on March 27 while…
New York, February 28, 2006—The Committee to Protect Journalists condemns harassment and death threats by Burmese security officials against Maung Maung Kyaw Win, a senior reporter and editor at the Burmese-language Myanmar Dana economics magazine. The threats have prompted the journalist to flee the country, and he is now seeking political asylum. Maung Maung Kyaw…
AFGHANISTAN: 1 Ali Mohaqqiq Nasab, Haqooq-i-Zan (Women’s Rights) Imprisoned: October 1, 2005 The attorney general ordered editor Nasab’s arrest on blasphemy charges after the religious adviser to President Hamid Karzai, Mohaiuddin Baluch, filed a complaint about his magazine. “I took the two magazines and spoke to the Supreme Court chief, who wrote to the attorney…
BURMA International pressure goaded Burma’s ruling military junta into releasing several journalists and hundreds of political prisoners in 2005. But five journalists were among the more than 1,300 remaining detainees, and Nobel Peace Prize–winner Aung San Suu Kyi was still under house arrest. On January 3, the junta released journalists Thein Tan and Ohn Kyaing,…
BANGKOK, ThailandAfter Burmese troops fired on democracy demonstrators in August 1988, Aung Zaw, a student who had already been jailed for helping to publish pro-democracy pamphlets, fled into the jungle. Seventeen years later he has yet to return home. Aung Zaw, a pseudonym, is a senior member of a vibrant community of Burmese journalists in…
New York, July 6, 2005—The Committee to Protect Journalists welcomes the release today of two imprisoned Burmese journalists, documentary filmmaker Aung Pwint and freelance journalist Sein Hla Oo. Burma’s military government released more than 240 prisoners today, including several prominent political prisoners, according to a spokesman from the opposition National League for Democracy party (NLD).…