A teacher who ran an online school opposed to military rule was sentenced to 20 years in prison on Monday by a Myanmar junta court at Obo Prison in Mandalay, according to lawyers.
Daw Ei Shwe Sin Myint was head of the Federal School of Aung Myay Thar Zan in Aungmyaythazan Township, Mandalay Region, in cooperation with the civilian National Unity Government (NUG).
“She was charged with terrorism at Aungmyaythazan District Court and tried by a special court in the prison. She was given 20 years. There are also co-defendants. I don’t know their sentences,” a lawyer told The Irrawaddy on condition of anonymity.
The school was opened in February 2022, a year after the coup, for families that rejected education under the junta with classes from primary to lower-secondary levels.
Four teachers, including Daw Ei Shwe Sin Myint, were arrested on March 22 last year. The school was subsequently closed.
Junta newspapers in April last year reported that 15 teachers, aged 20 to 40, were arrested for unlawfully teaching at the instruction of the NUG.
The reports warned that those who financed the school, collaborated with it and the parents would also face prosecution.
The schools were not NUG-run but rather community schools emerging from cooperation between teachers who joined the civil disobedience movement (CDM), children and parents, said a striking high-school teacher.
“Community schools were opened to provide education for all and set up a federal education system to challenge the military dictatorship and its education. But people who have forcibly seized power with weapons say the schools are unlawful,” she said.
While some schools are online, in some parts of Sagaing Region and ethnic-minority areas where resistance forces have replaced junta administration, children can study in community schools.
The regime makes sure striking teachers do not work at private schools.
A striking lecturer from Yadanabon University: “It is quite ugly to arrest and imprison those teaching children. It is against the law. Teachers have been officially dismissed for joining the CDM. And it is extrajudicial bullying to arrest them for teaching outside public schools.”
