A Burmese court on Tuesday sentenced a writer to two years in prison and hard labor for insulting Buddhism, his lawyer said, a verdict derided by activists as a blow to free speech and religious tolerance.
Htin Lin Oo, a former official with Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy party, was found guilty by the court in the northern Sagaing region for comments made in a speech he said was intended to discourage Buddhist extremism.
“Htin Lin Oo criticized Buddhist monks who had given hate speeches,” lawyer Thein Than Oo said.
The transitio Tn by Myanmar to democracy four years ago has seen the emergence of a kind of Buddhist nationalism rarely seen under the military’s five decades of strict rule.
Long simmering tension between the Buddhist majority and minority Muslims has surfaced with the lifting of bans on protests and easing of censorship, and has at times spiraled into rioting and deadly religious violence, with Muslims the worst hit.
Thein Than Oo said he feared his client’s previous involvement with the opposition party had raised the profile of the case.
He said the decision would be appealed.
He said a 10-minute video segment of his client’s two-hour speech that circulated online in October last year was purposefully misinterpreted by extremists.
The verdict was condemned by rights groups for sending the wrong message.
The Burmese government “should be encouraging writers like Htin Lin Oo to promote interfaith tolerance in the country, rather than sending him to jail,” Wai Hnin of Burma Campaign UK said in a statement.
London-based Amnesty International said Htin Lin Oo was a prisoner of conscience, who should be freed immediately.
“The growing influence of extremist Buddhist nationalists and their hateful rhetoric in Myanmar is deeply troubling,” Amnesty’s regional research director Rupert Abbot said in a statement.
“The [Burmese] government seems intent on compounding the problem by imprisoning those speaking out against religious intolerance,” Abbot added.
‘CROSSING THE LINE’: China’s embassy in Seoul criticized US Forces Korea Commander General Xavier Brunson, asking if his ‘hostile’ remarks were authorized by Washington South Korea and the US are in talks over recent public remarks by the commander of US Forces Korea, Seoul’s presidential office said yesterday, after the comments drew sharp criticism from China. In a recent podcast interview, US Forces Korea Commander General Xavier Brunson described South Korea as “the dagger in the heart of Asia” from China’s east coast, prompting the Chinese embassy in Seoul to say that he had “truly crossed the line.” The interview came amid growing speculation that Washington might seek to expand the role of US Forces Korea in countering the growing regional influence of China, a key
Through the noise of rushing papers and whirring belts at a print factory in Kyoto, two creators watch their photo essay come to life in broadsheet form — part of an effort to win new audiences in the age of artificial intelligence (AI). Despite the decline of the publishing industry, self-publication and handmade “zine” magazines are growing in popularity in Japan, reflecting the nation’s enduring love of paper in the digital era. While speaking to Agence France-Presse at the plant, his hands black with ink, one of the creators, Kazuma Obara, said: “I think [paper] is a medium that engages all five
Australian researchers have trained lab-grown brain cells on a silicon computer chip to play the 1990s shooter game Doom and said they are just scratching the surface of what the neurons could be capable of doing. It is the science-fiction work of biotech boffins at Cortical Labs, who researched and developed the technology that harnesses the workings of the brain’s networking system. Each so-called “biological computer” contains about 200,000 living human brain cells, grown from stem cells that were harvested from blood donations. Having mastered the simple computer game Pong, where a paddle is moved up and down to send a ball
France experienced its hottest spring on record, the French weather service said on Tuesday, after an exceptional early heat wave that also broke highs for the season in England and Wales. Meteo-France said the average nationwide temperature over March to May was 13.8°C — about 1.7°C above the norm, and surpassing records set in 2011 and 2020. “The warmest spring since records began in 1900,” it said in a bulletin. All three months were warmer than average, but the onset of an “unprecedented heatwave” late last month pushed the mercury to highs typically seen at the height of the summer. “Our country had never
RSS