BURMA: Young man wrongly jailed on charge of inciting September protests

Dear friends,

The Asian Human Rights Commission (AHRC) has been documenting cases of illegal arrest, detention and prosecution since the nationwide protests in Burma last September. In this appeal we give the details of the case of one young man who was arrested because of having some publications linked to those events and after a short closed trial in which he was wrongly charged, did not have a lawyer, could not call any witnesses and had a forged confession read out against him he was sentenced to 22 years in jail.

CASE DETAILS:

On 7 September 2007, a man named Soe Khaing Win left four publications at a photocopy shop in Mandalay. The publications, which had titles like “The people awake! Time to take to the streets”, were described as “inflammatory” and “anti-government”. Later, two others, Ye Min Zaw and Ko Thiha, came to collect them. Thereafter, the police went looking for the three; however, the first two were able to evade arrest. They only captured 34-year-old Ko Thiha that night when he was south of Mandalay, near the town of Wundwin, on the road to his hometown of Meikhtila.

The police brought Thiha to the district court in Mandalay on September 14 and charged him with sedition and upsetting public tranquillity. This is despite the fact that lawyers question the legality of the current government charging anyone with sedition because the law requires that this charge be lodged by a lawyer for a constitutional government; however, Burma has been without a constitution since 1988. It is also despite the fact that the case against him should have been opened in the court in Wundwin, where he was arrested, not in Mandalay.

The trial was held at a special court inside the Mandalay Prison. Thiha did not have a lawyer to represent him, even though he was facing a life sentence. He was not able to call any witnesses or defend himself in court. Meanwhile, the witnesses that the police called were not the ones present when Thiha was actually arrested. The police did not present any evidence to strongly support the charge of sedition and instead called another judge who briefly testified that Thiha had made a confession before him, which was presented as evidence. However, Thiha claims to have never seen that judge before the trial.

The hearings were all completed in a single day, and on September 17 after only ten days of investigation and trial the presiding judge sentenced Thiha to 22 years in prison. He ordered warrants of arrest for the other two accused. Thiha was sent to the central prison.

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION:

According to a report by Democratic Voice of Burma radio in November 2007, unidentified Special Branch police in Meikhtila had called and interrogated Ko Thiha’s then-seven-months-pregnant wife, Ma The The, on suspicions that she was also involved in anti-government activities. They took a statement from her and also photographed her before allowing her to go home.

BACKGROUND INFORMATION:

This is yet another case that speaks to the “legal dementia” that exists in Burma whereby neither the police nor courts appear capable of following even their domestic laws and procedures, to say nothing of international standards, which the AHRC’s sister organisation has described in a recent comprehensive report on Burma: “Burma, political psychosis and legal dementia“. See for instance another recent appeal concerning a case in which the young woman accused, Ma Thida, was charged with the same offence of sedition: AHRC-UAC-048-2008.

This dementia has been particularly evident in the handling of the protests of last August and September 2007. See for instance the case of Khin Sanda Win, who is being held in solitary confinement: AHRC-UAC-022-2008. See also a recent appeal on the status of monks, nuns and some ordinary civilians detained since the protests: AHRC-UAC-024-2008.

The AHRC is following the detention and trials of persons after last September very closely and will issue more appeals on these cases in coming weeks. It also set up a webpage with links to statements, appeals and media on the protests and their aftermath: http://campaigns.ahrchk.net/burmaprotests/

Ko Thiha may have been targeted in part because he is a member of the Human Rights Defenders and Promoters (HRDP) group. The AHRC has also issued a number of cases on other members of the HRDP who have been jailed in recent times, including the Hinthada 6 (http://campaigns.ahrchk.net/hinthada6/) and tuition teacher Min Min (UA-108-2007); see also AHRC-OL-035-2007.

For further general information on Burma see also the 2007 AHRC Human Rights Reportchapter on Burma, and visit the AHRC Burma homepage: http://burma.ahrchk.net.

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SUGGESTED ACTION:

Please write to the persons listed below to call for a thorough review and retrial of the case against Ko Thiha. Please note that for the purpose of the letter, the country should be referred to by its official title of Myanmar, rather than Burma.

Please be informed that the AHRC is writing a separate letter to the UN Special Rapporteurs on Myanmar and independence of judges and lawyers as well as the UN Special Representative on human rights defenders, the UN Working Group on arbitrary detention and the regional human rights office for Southeast Asia, calling for interventions into this case.

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