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BANGKOK (AP) — A former high-profile Myanmar military officer who had served as info minister and presidential spokesperson in a earlier military-backed authorities has been convicted of sedition and incitement, a authorized official stated Thursday, 30 November. He was sentenced to 10 years in jail.
Ye Htut, a 64-year-old retired lieutenant colonel, is the newest in a sequence of individuals arrested and jailed for writing Fb posts that allegedly unfold false or inflammatory information. As soon as sometimes prosecuted, there was a deluge of such authorized actions because the military seized energy from the elected authorities of Aung San Suu Kyi in February 2021.
He was arrested in late October after a army officer from the Yangon Regional Army Command reportedly filed a cost towards him, across the time when some senior army officers have been purged on different expenses, together with corruption. He was convicted on Wednesday, in response to an official accustomed to the authorized proceedings who insisted on anonymity for worry of being punished by the authorities.
Ye Htut was the spokesperson from 2013 to 2016 for President Thein Sein in a military-backed authorities and likewise the knowledge minister from 2014 to 2016.
After leaving the federal government in 2016, Ye Htut took on the position of a political commentator, wrote books, and posted articles on Fb. For a time, he was a visiting senior analysis fellow on the ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute, a middle for Southeast Asia research in Singapore.
After the military’s 2021 takeover, he usually posted brief private vignettes and journey essays on Fb by which he made allusions that have been typically acknowledged to be important of Myanmar’s present army rulers.
The military’s takeover triggered mass public protests that the army and police responded to with deadly power, triggering armed resistance and violence that escalated right into a civil battle.
The official accustomed to the courtroom proceedings towards Ye Htut instructed The Related Press that he was sentenced by a courtroom in Yangon’s Insein jail to seven years for sedition and three years for incitement. Ye Htut was accused on the idea of his posts on his Fb account and didn’t rent a lawyer to symbolize him at his trial, the official stated.
The sedition cost makes disrupting or hindering the work of protection providers personnel or authorities workers punishable by as much as seven years in jail. The incitement cost makes it a criminal offense to publish or flow into feedback that trigger worry, unfold false information, or agitate immediately or not directly for legal offenses towards a authorities worker—an offense punishable by as much as three years in jail.
Nevertheless, a press release from the Ministry of Authorized Affairs stated he had been charged underneath a unique sedition statute. There was no rationalization for the discrepancy.
In keeping with detailed lists compiled by the Help Affiliation for Political Prisoners, a watchdog group based mostly in Thailand, 4,204 civilians have died in Myanmar within the army authorities’s crackdown on opponents, and not less than 25,474 individuals have been arrested.
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BY GRANT PECK Related Press
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