BURMA: Court appeal against lawyer jailed for helping farmers contact ILO headed for Supreme Court 

Dear friends,

Since last year, the Asian Human Rights Commission (AHRC) has closely followed the case of U Aye Myint, a lawyer who was arrested at the end of August 2005 and imprisoned at the end of October for helping a group of farmers to lodge a complaint with the International Labour Organisation (ILO) over loss of pastureland. The AHRC has recently obtained detailed documentation, including court records, of the case. Two appeals against the conviction have been thrown out by the lower courts. The case is now headed for the Supreme Court, and must be lodged there by May 7 at the latest. The AHRC is gravely concerned that as in other cases of this sort it will be summarily thrown out by the court.

On 5 June 2005, local officials in Daik-U township, Pegu Division (north of Rangoon Division), arranged a meeting with around 100 farmers in Phaungdawthi Village Tract. The secretary of the local council, U Aye Ngwe, informed the farmers that they would be allocated 132 acres out of 452 acres of designated pastureland for their cattle to graze upon. The remainder of the land would be divided up among the army, army supply corps, a government-established mass mobilisation body (the Union Solidarity and Development Association) and the township army veterans’ association.

The farmers were unhappy as this was officially designated pastureland and they felt that the amount of land left for their cattle would be insufficient. They sought the assistance of lawyer U Aye Myint to lodge a complaint. The following day, June 6, Aye Myint assisted in writing a letter of complaint to the representative of the International Labour Organisation (ILO) in Rangoon, which was signed by 15 farmers. A group of the farmers later met the ILO representative, together with two local officials who were supportive of their complaint.

The township authorities reacted by arresting Aye Myint on the night of August 27. According to his son’s testimony in court, police and government officers arrived at the family residence at about 11:30pm on the pretext of checking for illegal visitors. (In Burma all visitors staying overnight away from their own house must be registered.) After that they said they had come to arrest Aye Myint, and took him away to detention at the Daik-U Township Police Station.

On October 10, the preliminary hearings against Aye Myint began in the Daik-U Township Court, on a charge of having distributed false information, under an antiquated emergency regulation.

The court refused two applications for bail.

The prosecution reportedly organised the local officials and farmers to testify against Aye Myint. They were instructed to say that they had been satisfied with the arrangement for the land, but he had stirred up trouble and provoked them to write the letter.

However, in the court most of the witnesses for the prosecution turned hostile. Only the complainant, a local police officer, very strongly asserted that Aye Myint had acted wrongly. Unusually, the other local officials refused to say that he had done anything wrong. The farmers who were called insisted before the court that they were not happy and had acted on their own, only asking Aye Myint for assistance to draft and submit the complaint. According to persons following the case, the prosecution had planned for around 30 witnesses. However, after one witness after the next turned their testimony in favour of the defence, the prosecution closed its case after only 14.

Nonetheless, on October 24 Judge U Mya Han officially charged Aye Myint under section 5(e) of the 1950 Emergency Provisions Act. On October 31, without further hearings, he was sentenced to seven years’ hard labour. The judgment was written by the judge to exclude testimony given in the court that would undermine the conviction, although it still contains sufficient information to reveal that only the testimony of one of the prosecution witnesses–the police officer complainant–strongly supported a conviction.

LEGAL PROBLEMS WITH THE JUDGMENT

Like many other court judgments in Burma, the decision against U Aye Myint is seriously flawed not just in terms of international law but also under domestic provisions. In particular:

1. The key witnesses, farmers U Kanya and U Kyaing, who led the group to make its complaint of June 6 and meet with the ILO, maintained their stories that they, and not Aye Myint, had planned and submitted the letter. They have also insisted, at great personal risk, that their complaint is genuine. Therefore, there are no grounds to say that Aye Myint is guilty of spreading false information, as he was neither responsible for the letter, and nor has the information been shown to be false.

2. The court has in effect punished Aye Myint for having had contact with the ILO. However, the Supreme Court has held that as Burma is a member state of the UN and the ILO it cannot be illegal for its citizens to have contact with these agencies.

3. In 1989 the government issued an order that the Emergency Provisions Act could only be used with the approval of the Ministry of Home Affairs. However, in this case no permission has been given and the court has therefore convicted Aye Myint illegally.

Other cases in Burma that the AHRC has reported on recently where the judgment has failed to comply with domestic law include the Aunglan forced labour case (UA-050-2006), which has many similarities to this case.

APPEALS PROCESS

On 2 January 2006, Judge Daw Khin Win Myint of the Pegu District Court threw out an appeal against the conviction.

On March 7, Assistant Divisional Judge Daw Khin Saw Nyunt of the Pegu Division Court again threw out the appeal.

Interestingly, while serving as a district court judge in 2003, Khin Saw Nyunt convicted Aye Myint, among others, of treason and sentenced him to death for giving information to the ILO. The Supreme Court later commuted the sentence and he was released from jail at the start of 2005 together with a large number of other prisoners.

The appeal is now proceeding to the Supreme Court. However, in similar cases that court too has simply thrown out the matter without giving it due consideration. See for instance the case of Ma Su Su Nwe (UP-017-2006, see also AHRC-PL-006-2006, AS-015-2006), which is also related to the ILO, and jailed tuition teacher U Aung Pe (AHRC-PL-012-2006).

Meanwhile, Aye Myint is reported to be in poor health and suffering from anaemia in prison.

ILO CONCERNS

The International Labour Organisation’s representative in Burma has necessarily been involved in the case from the start. In November 2005 the representative reported that he had raised the case with the Minister of Labour but the minister had indicated that “just because certain individuals had had some contact with the ILO in the past did not mean that they were above the law” (GB.294/6/2, fn. 11).

In his March 2006 report, the representative said that after again expressing serious concerns about this and other cases to the Minister of Labour he received a reply from the deputy minister that the convictions had nothing to do with the ILO (GB.295/7, para. 12).

The ILO is now at the stage of reviewing whether or not to continue its operations in Burma due to the continued prosecution of complainants and non-cooperation of the authorities.

ADDITIONAL COMMENTS

Cases of extortion of lands and money from farmers in Burma are particularly common. In remote regions, where there is little physical security and no civilian administration or system of land titles, confiscation of land by the military is frequently reported. There is no recourse for farmers in those areas that have lost their land.

However, as this and other cases show, even farmers in central parts of the country have few if any avenues for complaint, as in all cases in Burma involving government authorities. See for instance the recent jailing of two persons in Bogalay Township after complaining about extortion of money from farmers there (UA-071-2006).

As Burma is still operating under a socialist system of landholding, technically farmers are leaseholders, not owners, of the land they cultivate. The state is the sole owner of land. Government authorities use various pretexts to exercise authority illegally and confiscate farmers’ land. For a detailed description of these issues, see the 1999 Voice of the Hungry Nation report of the People’s Tribunal on Food Scarcity and Militarisation in Burma.

SUGGESTED ACTION:

Please write to the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Burma calling for the court to open this appeal for consideration, rather than dismiss it summarily as in the lower courts and in other cases. Please note that for the purpose of the letter, the country should be referred to by its official title of Myanmar, rather than Burma, and Pegu Division as Bago Division.

 

 

To support this case, please click here: SEND APPEAL LETTER