Myanmar: Poets, celebrities and journalists detained by military

[vc_row][vc_column][vc_single_image image=”116543″ img_size=”full” add_caption=”yes”][vc_column_text]A popular poet and comedian, and a women’s rights campaigner who co-founded Myanmar’s independent Mizzima news channel are the latest in Myanmar to fall foul of the military junta.

The military, led by General Min Aung Hlaing, has recently targeted poets, comedians and celebrities in order to silence protest against its power grab following democratic elections last November in which Aung San Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy party won a landslide victory.

The miltary authorities recently published a list of 120 celebrities wanted for arrest, some of whom have since been detained.

Popular comedian, poet, actor and director Maung Thura, known commonly as Zarganar, was arrested and detained on 6 April without charge.

Zarganar spoke to Index in 2012, a year after his release from an earlier 59-year prison sentence imposed in 2008 by the former military dictatorship in the country.

In the article, he describes his time in prison and told Index: “Freedom of speech and freedom of expression is very important for our country, for openness and transparency.”

“Over the 40 years [of the last military regime], we were living in a dark room. People could not see us,” he said. “Free art, free thought, freedom. It is very important.”

Paing Takhon, a 24-year-old actor who had expressed support for the protests, has also been detained.

The detained are perhaps the lucky ones.

Poet K Za Win was killed on 3 March by Myanmar’s security forces during protests in Monywa. On the same day, footage of bodies being dragged through the street by army personnel surfaced online.

Meanwhile, Daw Thin Thin Aung, a journalist and women’s rights activist who co-founded the banned independent news channel Mizzima in 1998,  has also been detained by the Tatmadaw military.

Mizzima lost its licence to broadcast in early March along with other broadcasters Khit Thit Media, Democratic Voice of Burma (DVB), 7 Day and Myanmar Now. Despite this, Mizzima has continued its coverage of the violent arrests, shootings and other actions taken by security forces against both citizens and journalists online.

Former Mizzima journalist U James Pu Thoure has also been detained by the authorities, continuing General Min Aung Hlaing’s attack on journalists reporting on protests in the country against the coup.

Mizzima editor-in-chief Soe Myint said in a statement: “Mizzima Media is deeply concerned to learn that Daw Thin Thin Aung and U James Pu Thoure, former members of Mizzima, have been detained without charges.”

Myint said that both Thin Thin Aung and Pu Thoure had formally left the organisation since the coup of 1 February 2021.

Thin Thin Aung had previously worked as a journalist for the BBC while in exile in India. As well as her journalism, she spent many years campaigning for women’s rights in Burma, also founding the Women’s League of Burma (WLB).

Of her detainment, the WLB said “We are extremely concerned about the life and safety of Thin Thin Aung. We urge the international community to press the military coup council for the immediate release of Thin Thin Aung and other detained activists.”

Concerns have also been raised over Thin Thin Aung’s health, particularly as prison conditions in the country are notoriously poor. Mizzimia’s Soe Myint said she had been unwell for some time and had withdrawn from active working life prior to leaving Mizzima.

Since the coup, many journalists have been arrested and charged under Section 505(a) of the country’s penal code which makes it a crime to publish any “statement, rumour or report”, “with intent to cause, or which is likely to cause, any officer, soldier, sailor or airman, in the Army, Navy or Air Force to mutiny or otherwise disregard or fail in his duty”, essentially making criticism of the military government impossible.

According to Myanmar’s Assistance Association for Political Prisoners (AAPP), as of 9 April, 40 journalists had been arrested of which 31 have been detained and sentenced. It said that seven other journalists facing arrest warrants remain in hiding.

The AAPP says that the total number of people killed in Myanmar since the coup is 614. In the same period, more than 2,850 people have been arrested or detained without charge.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][three_column_post title=”You may also want to read” category_id=”38″][/vc_column][/vc_row]

A win for Assange, but not for free speech

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Julian Assange/Cancillería del Ecuador/WikiCommons

This week’s decision not to extradite WikiLeaks founder, Julian Assange, to the USA to stand trial for charges of espionage came as welcome relief to Assange’s family and supporters. However, he remains detained at London’s high-security Belmarsh prison after the judge refused bail citing concerns he would abscond.

Before we consider the ruling against extradition as a victory for free speech it’s worth exploring the details of District Judge Vanessa Baraitser’s ruling which risk creating a chilling effect on public interest journalism. 

Judge Baraitser’s ruling at no stage allowed for the protections governed by Article 10 of the UK Human Rights Act to halt the extradition. Instead, in denying the US Government’s request to extradite Assange, Baraitser concluded that “the mental condition of Mr. Assange is such that it would be oppressive to extradite him to the United States of America”.

In doing so, the judge accepted the testimony of medical experts who said that Assange represented a potential suicide risk if he were to be incarcerated in the USA; Jeffrey Epstein’s suicide and Chelsea Manning’s attempted suicide are both mentioned in the ruling.

The risk was exacerbated because Assange would likely face so-called special administrative measures which would limit his communication with the outside world and visiting rights.

Baraitser’s decisions regarding the key legal arguments of Assange’s defence are cause for concern and risk creating a precedent which would prevent journalists from publishing sensitive information in the public interest and the ruling appears to have extended the scope of Britain’s Official Secrets Act.

As part of the extradition request, the court had to be satisfied, to the criminal standard, that Assange’s conduct would constitute an offence under the law of England and Wales.

Baraitser said in the judgment: “I have found that Mr. Assange’s conduct is capable of amounting to an offence in England and Wales. It follows that I do not accept that the mere fact charges are brought in the US demonstrates that they are brought in bad faith.”

This argument appears to be based on the premise that Assange’s actions would have fallen foul of section 5 of the UK’s Official Secrets Act (OSA) 1989 which applies to individuals, including publishers, who are not the original leaker of the information. This criminalises “those who disclose protected materials which are damaging and which they have disclosed knowing, or having reasonable cause to believe, would be damaging”. 

The US government’s argument is similar and maintains that under US law a free speech defence does not necessarily cover classified information even if it is in the public interest and they said Assange had disclosed materials “that no responsible journalist or publisher would have disclosed” when WikiLeaks published its full archive of 251,000 secret US diplomatic cables without redacting the names of sources.

It is this assertion that has led the US government to charge Assange under the 1917 Espionage Act, which is primarily designed for spies, rather than journalists or publishers. 

Before the verdict, Assange’s partner Stella Moris told Index: “They say Julian published information that was secret and therefore he can be prosecuted over it. They never used [this act] to prosecute someone publishing information for the public.”

The defence argued that Assange was “doing no more than engaging in the ordinary and lawful conduct of the investigative journalist”, which is protected by Article 10.

However, Baraitser stated that the Article 10 right to freedom of expression “is not absolute”. 

She added: “In my judgment, notwithstanding the vital importance in guaranteeing freedom of the press, the provisions of the OSA 1989, where they are used to prosecute the disclosure of the names of informants, are necessary in a democratic society in the interests of national security.”

She also contested Assange’s assertion that he was acting as a responsible journalist.

“The difficulty with this argument is that it vests in Assange the right to make the decision to sacrifice the safety of these few individuals, knowing nothing of their circumstances or the dangers they faced, in the name of free speech. In the modern digital age, vast amounts of information can be indiscriminately disclosed to a global audience, almost instantly, by anyone with access to a computer and an internet connection. 

“Unlike the traditional press, those who choose to use the internet to disclose sensitive information in this way are not bound by a professional code or ethical journalistic duty or practice. Those who post information on the internet have no obligation to act responsibly or to exercise judgment in their decisions. In the modern era, where ‘dumps’ of vast amounts of data onto the internet can be carried out by almost anyone, it is difficult to see how a concept of ‘responsible journalism’ can sensibly be applied.”

If the judge does allow the US appeal in the next two weeks and Assange is extradited, he will not have recourse to protection under the First Amendment laws which protect freedom of speech. Incumbent Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has previously argued that First Amendment privileges should not be afforded to Assange and WikiLeaks.

Pompeo’s comments were deemed by many to be politically motivated in order to deter the likes of the WikiLeaks founder from repeating similar actions. Being the first administration to use the Espionage Act in such a way seemed to support this. 

But Baraitser once again rejected the defence’s argument, deciding that: “The defence points to comments made by Attorney General Sessions a week after Mr. Pompeo’s speech in April 2017 that “[journalists] cannot place lives at risk with impunity,” that prosecuting Assange was a “priority” for the new administration, and that if ‘a case can be made, we will seek to put some people in jail’. However, as the US points out, these comments appear to be no more than statements of what is perhaps obvious, and conditional on whether criminal liability can be established. There is nothing sinister in bringing a prosecution ‘if a case can be made’.”

Again, the Espionage Act is a factor here as it does not contain a public interest defence. Therefore, charging journalists under this Act is considered by many as one-sided and unfair as it removes the protections free speech laws afford.

Index’s position is clear. Governments, authoritarian or not, in order to protect our collective human rights and to enable power to be held accountable, must be open to scrutiny and are a fair target for investigative journalists, even if the definition of what constitutes an investigative journalist is no longer as clear as it once was. 

The issue at hand is not about Assange the person, but rather the very principle of a free and fair press which operates in the public interest.  That is the principle at stake in this judgment.

Other press freedom organisations, such as the International Federation of Journalists, Reporters Without Borders and the Centre for Investigative Journalism, have also expressed their disquiet with the ruling. 

We recognise that there are certainly questions about the manner in which Assange published the information without redacting the names of journalists and activists, a move which was condemned by a number of newspapers which worked with WikiLeaks to reveal the contents of the diplomatic cables. 

However, the fact remains that much of the information published about the actions of certain governments was clearly in the public interest.

If the US government can decide on a case-by-case basis who is a spy and who is a journalist then this makes the job of the latter that much more challenging. The fear that investigative journalists may be extradited will mean stories that need to be brought to light will remain in the darkest of shadows.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][three_column_post title=”You may also like to read” category_id=”5641″][/vc_column][/vc_row]

Masked by Covid

FEATURING

Forced motherhood is an infringement on free expression

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A Women’s March in 2017. Credit: Mark Dixon/Flickr

“I had a second trimester abortion,” tweeted Erica Goldblatt Hyatt, a Canadian living in the USA. “Our son never formed an airway. Had he survived birth he would have been brain dead. That wasn’t the life I wanted for him. It was the first true parenting decision I ever made.”

Goldblatt Hyatt’s story was included in a CNN article, along with stories from a mother of two who didn’t want more children and a woman who got pregnant at 16 with no family support, about the reasons women have abortions.

Since the passing of Roe v Wade in the Supreme Court in 1973, abortion has been enshrined in law in the USA. Some states have restrictions on access to abortion, but the ruling that it is a legal right has remained in place.

The passing of Ruth Bader Ginsburg in September, and her replacement by Amy Coney Barrett, has fuelled the fire of panic in women that this right could soon be snatched away, a panic they have felt since 2016 when Donald Trump said that if he is able to select enough justices for the bench, over-turning Roe v Wade “will happen automatically”.

The USA is not the only country where reproductive rights are being dismantled. Mass protests have broken out in Poland over the last few weeks after the constitutional court ruled that, even in the case of severe foetal abnormalities, women will be forced by law to carry the pregnancy to term. This is a further encroachment on reproductive freedom in a country that already has some of the most restrictive abortion laws in Europe.

The women of Northern Ireland are also facing barriers to reproductive freedom. Despite abortion being decriminalised in October 2019, access to clinics is severely lacking, prompting the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists to write a letter, sections of which were published by the Independent on 26 October, warning of the risks to women.

“There have already been at least two cases of attempted suicide by women in Northern Ireland unable to access care,” it says, adding that there has been a dramatic increase in women “turning to unregulated methods of abortion during the pandemic.”

Reproductive rights are a freedom of expression issue. We do not only express ourselves verbally and artistically, we express ourselves through the choices we make about how we live our lives and what happens to our bodies. The decisions about when, if ever, to become a mother, and to how many children, are some of the biggest a woman can make. When states take control of this decision, they are taking control of our self-expression.

This is not to say that these decisions cannot be discussed and debated. Debate is at the heart of freedom of expression and that extends to the topic of abortion. People should be allowed to talk about the questions surrounding it, such as “when does life start?” For some it starts at the moment of conception, meaning abortion at any stage, even the very early weeks, would constitute ending a life. But this is not a consensus. And even if life does start at conception, that would not necessarily mean that abortion should be banned. After all, there are all kinds of practises that we allow as a society even if we question them morally because we believe banning them would ultimately go against freedom and autonomy.

Pro-life advocates must of course have their right to this view respected, and no one should force them to abort. But equally people attempting to force their beliefs on others, and control their actions to be in line with these beliefs, is when the defenders of freedom of expression must step in.

It should go without saying that the consequences of being forced to have a child are far-reaching. There’s the toll on mental health for one. According to research by scientists at King’s College London one in four pregnant women suffer from mental health problems. This can be even more extreme for those in unwanted pregnancies. In 2017 a young woman, who became known as Ms Y, sued the official health service in Ireland after she was not only denied an abortion but held against her will and forced medication to prolong the pregnancy. She had arrived in Ireland in 2014 seeking asylum and soon discovered she was pregnant. She said she’d been raped and was suicidal because of the pregnancy.

Research also shows that having a baby can hold a woman’s career back six years. Inflicting career disruptions on women by forcing them to continue with unwanted pregnancies is an infringement on their self-expression in the workplace that can have long-spanning repercussions. And then there are all the negative impacts it can have on relationships, finances, social support networks – the list could go on. None of these are trivial matters. Rather they’re all choices that are part of our free expression.

The Polish ruling also highlights that many abortions are because either the baby or the mother, or both, are seriously ill. Abortion is not always a lifestyle choice. It is often a very traumatic decision a woman is forced to make about an intended pregnancy. Heart-breaking as these decisions undoubtedly are, the most profound forms of expression are often the choices we make about our health and that of our families.

Incidentally, as is often the case with censoring behaviour, removing someone’s choice can actually be counter-productive. A study by the National Library of Medicine concluded that women who had had an abortion were more likely to have an intended pregnancy within the next five years than women forced to continue with an unwanted pregnancy. Diane Greene Foster, one of the academics who conducted the study, concluded: “Being able to access abortion gives women the opportunity to have a child later with the right partner, at the right time”. She added that a woman who is denied an abortion is likely to “face diminished opportunities to achieve other life goals, gain secure financial footing, and have a child she can cherish and support”.

Remaining childless, or having children with the right partner when it is the right time to do so, is an umbrella of self-expression under which so many other forms of expression shelter; expression through work, through lifestyle choices, through parenting ability. It is a form of expression which must remain in the hands of individuals and be kept out of the grips of the state.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]