Dr. Nay Soe Maung, the son-in-law of former military dictator Than Shwe, has been handed three years in jail for alleged sedition nearly three months after being detained and tried at a junta court in Mandalay’s Obo Prison.
The 68-year-old former lieutenant colonel was sentenced on Jan. 16, a Mandalay lawyer confirmed.
“I don’t know the details, as he hired lawyers from Yangon. I heard he is being kept in solitary confinement in Obo Prison,” the lawyer said.
The junta charged the ex-dictator’s son-in-law for with “damaging national peace and stability” through his Facebook posts, in a challenge to Than Shwe, who handpicked current regime leader Min Aung Hlaing as military chief in 2011.
The regime announced in late October last year that Nay Soe Maung had been charged with “inciting and spreading propaganda on social media to disrupt peace and stability in the country”.
Facebook is banned in Myanmar but people inside the country use virtual private networks to bypass the prohibition.
On Oct. 7, Nay Soe Maung posted a Facebook condolence message over the death of jailed statesman Dr. Zaw Myint Maung, the vice chair of the National League for Democracy, whose government the military ousted in 2021.
“If you are a human in your next life, I hope you are born in a free, just country where humans are treated as humans, to work for people’s betterment, Sir!” he wrote.
In the post, he used a Burmese phrase equivalent to “casting pearls before swine”, in reply to a comment asking whether his father-in-law had tried to persuade current regime boss Min Aung Hlaing to stop the killing and bombing of civilians, which the junta has been conducting since the 2021 coup.
Nay Soe Maung, who is married to Than Shwe’ s daughter, Kyi Kyi Shwe, served as rector of the University of Public Health after retiring from his post as captain in the medical corps. Their son, Nay Shwe Thway Aung, is believed to be the former dictator’s favorite grandchild.
Dr. Nay Soe Maung’s arrest and imprisonment is the latest in Myanmar’s long history of power struggles between ruling dictators and their predecessors when authority is challenged.
In 2002, when Than Shwe was in power, he arrested the grandsons of ex-dictator Ne Win grandsons for leading a failed coup against him and placed Ne Win under house arrest until his death.
Than Shwe faded from public view after appointing Min Aung Hlaing as military chief and handing over power to the quasi-civilian Thein Sein government in early 2011.
Min Aung Hlaing has faced a nationwide armed uprising since leading the coup four years ago. He has responded to the resistance with arbitrary killings and indiscriminate bombings of civilians, slaughtering at least 5,800 people so far.
In October last year, the regime arrested Ye Htut, information minister in Thein Sein’s government, and charged him with “spreading misinformation on social media.” The following month, he was handed 10 years in prison for sedition and incitement.
