Dear friends,
The Asian Human Rights Commission (AHRC) regrets to inform you that the requests to appeal against imprisonment of the “Hinthada 6” and another human rights defender from the same group have all been thrown out of courts in Burma. Meanwhile, another three have also reportedly been imprisoned, while one who had been was released.
APPEALS REJECTED:
The AHRC has documented in detail the case of the six human rights defenders who were sent to jail by the Hinthada court for four to eight years in July for upsetting “public tranquillity”: all details can be found at the campaign webpage.
Unfortunately, on 9 October 2007 the Irrawaddy Divisional Court (Assistant Divisional Judge U Myint Thein) rejected the leave to appeal of the men’s lawyer in both of the cases against them.
The same judge and court on the same day also rejected the request to appeal of U Myint Naing, one of the six, against the acquittal of six men accused over an assault on him and another person on 18 April 2007 (see UA-135-2007 and UP-082-2007).
Earlier, a request for leave to appeal against a conviction for “illegal tuition” of Ko Min Min, another member of the same Human Rights Defenders and Promoters (HRDP) group, was likewise refused by the Pegu (Western) Divisional Court (Assistant Divisional Judge U Maung Maung) on 2 October 2007.
It is understood that the men will all now lodge appeals in the Supreme Court.
MORE IMPRISONED:
Since the protests in Burma during August, another 13 members of the HRDP group are also reported to have been detained, including the organisation’s head, who at last report was being held in a police lock up (see AHRC-OL-035-2007).
Another member of the group, Ko Soe Win, was sentenced to four years in prison on October 11 (UP-136-2007). However, according to information received from the Yoma 3 news group (Thailand), on October 24 the case was retried and he was released. We will update further on this case later when we have confirmed the details.
Similarly, Yoma 3 has obtained information that another three male members of the HRDP group have been imprisoned for assisting with the protests. They are believed to be Ko Htay Naing Lin and Ko Chan Aung of Indaw, Sagaing Division, upper Burma, sentenced to two years’ imprisonment each on October 16 for inciting public fear or alarm (section 505[b] of the Penal Code), and Ko Zaw Lin of Katha, Sagaing, convicted together with elected member of parliament U Myint Kyi on October 18 under the same charge and sentenced for the same period of imprisonment. Again, we will issue an appeal on these cases once sufficient details are available.
Please refer to previous appeals and contents on the Burma Protests campaign page for action that you can take.
Thank you.
Urgent Appeals Programme
Asian Human Rights Commission (ua@ahrchk.org)
