The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) on Monday demanded the Myanmar junta release The Irrawaddy’s ex-publisher and let the independent news outlet operate freely following the regime’s jailing of the publisher last week.
U Thaung Win was sentenced by Western Yangon District Court to five years’ imprisonment and fined 100,000 kyats (about US$47) under Article 124-A of the Penal Code, which deals with the crime of sedition. The court has also issued arrest warrants for three other editors from The Irrawaddy.
He was arrested at his home in Yangon on Sept. 29 last year and initially charged with violating the Publishing and Distribution Act by reporting news that “negatively affected national security, rule of law and public peace”.
“The punitive and unjust sentencing of The Irrawaddy publisher Thaung Win is repugnant and should be immediately reversed,” said Shawn Crispin, CPJ’s senior Southeast Asia representative. “The military regime must release him and stop harassing The Irrawaddy for its fearless and uncompromising news reporting,” he said.
The military regime has banned The Irrawaddy and at least 13 other independent news outlets since a media crackdown following a coup against a democratically elected government on Feb. 1, 2021.
U Thaung Win, a former political prisoner for his pro-democracy activism in 1988, applied for a publishing license for The Irrawaddy in late 2012 after Myanmar launched democratic reforms the previous year. However, he was never involved in the editorial department or its decisions. His arrest came a year-and-a-half after the regime first targeted The Irrawaddy by filing a lawsuit against it. After that its journalists went into hiding to avoid arrest by the junta, and The Irrawaddy now operates offshore. U Thaung Win left the organization when it moved offshore.
Founded in exile in 1993, The Irrawaddy has been at the forefront of reporting on the regime’s atrocities against civilians while exposing the network of crony businessmen who have enjoyed shady links with the regime both at home and abroad since the coup.
Its ex-publisher’s jailing is the latest in a series of steps taken against The Irrawaddy by the junta since it seized power in 2021.
In March of that year the military regime sued the news outlet under Article 505 (a) for “disregarding” the armed forces in its reporting on the anti-regime protests that were occurring at the time. The police opened a case against The Irrawaddy as a whole rather than against individual employees, making it the first news outlet to be sued by the regime after the coup.
On two occasions later that year, The Irrawaddy’s office in downtown Yangon was raided by regime troops. No one was arrested during the raids.
In August last year, Zaw Zaw, a former photojournalist who had once worked for The Irrawaddy, was sentenced to three years in prison for incitement. One staff member was temporarily detained in early 2022, and the home of one of the news organization’s editors was also raided.
In October 2022, the junta officially ordered the closure of The Irrawaddy and revoked its publishing license.
Myanmar was the world’s third-worst jailer of journalists, with at least 42 members of the press behind bars, at the time of the CPJ’s Dec. 1, 2022 prison census.
