Three senior journalists working for a news agency in Myanmar who fled after the military government ordered its operations to stop have been arrested by police in northern Thailand, their editor said on Monday.
The three work for Democratic Voice of Burma (DVB), an online and broadcast news agency, its executive director and chief editor, Aye Chan Naing, said in an e-mail.
Burma is the former name for Myanmar and is still used by some opponents of military rule.
Photo: EPA-EFE
The three, along with two rights advocates, whom he did not identify, were arrested on Sunday in Chiang Mai during a random search by police, Aye Chan Naing said.
They were charged with illegal entry into Thailand, he said.
From photographs published by local Thai media, it appeared that the journalists might have continued to report from a single-story house in which they seemed to have set up a makeshift video production studio.
The Burmese junta, which seized power in February and ousted the elected government of Aung San Suu Kyi, has attempted to silence independent news media by withdrawing their licenses and by arresting journalists.
About 40 are in detention, including at least two who work for DVB.
Most of the detained journalists are being held on a provision in the Burmese Penal Code that prohibits comments that “cause fear,” spread “false news, [or] agitates directly or indirectly a criminal offense against a government employee.”
Violations are punishable by up to three years in prison.
“DVB strongly urges the Thai authorities to not deport them back to Burma, as their life will be in serious danger if they were to return,” the statement said. “They have been covering the demonstrations in Burma until March 8 — the day the military authority revoked DVB’s TV license and banned DVB from doing any kind of media work.”
Large street protests against military rule were being held in many cities in Myanmar at that time.
Government security forces increasingly used deadly force to disperse them, killing at least 750 protesters and bystanders, according to independent tallies.
The junta says that its forces have killed one-third that total and that using lethal force was justified to stop rioting.
The statement also appealed for the UN High Commissioner for Refugees to intervene to protect the journalists’ safety, and for the international community to ask the Thai government not to deport them.
The pitch is a classic: A young celebrity with no climbing experience spends a year in hard training and scales Mount Everest, succeeding against some — if not all — odds. French YouTuber Ines Benazzouz, known as Inoxtag, brought the story to life with a two-hour-plus documentary about his year preparing for the ultimate challenge. The film, titled Kaizen, proved a smash hit on its release last weekend. Young fans queued around the block to get into a preview screening in Paris, with Inoxtag’s management on Monday saying the film had smashed the box office record for a special cinema
CRITICISM: ‘One has to choose the lesser of two evils,’ Pope Francis said, as he criticized Trump’s anti-immigrant policies and Harris’ pro-choice position Pope Francis on Friday accused both former US president Donald Trump and US Vice President Kamala Harris of being “against life” as he returned to Rome from a 12-day tour of the Asia-Pacific region. The 87-year-old pontiff’s comments on the US presidential hopefuls came as he defied health concerns to connect with believers from the jungle of Papua New Guinea to the skyscrapers of Singapore. It was Francis’ longest trip in duration and distance since becoming head of the world’s nearly 1.4 billion Roman Catholics more than 11 years ago. Despite the marathon visit, he held a long and spirited
‘DISAPPEARED COMPLETELY’: The melting of thousands of glaciers is a major threat to people in the landlocked region that already suffers from a water shortage Near a wooden hut high up in the Kyrgyz mountains, scientist Gulbara Omorova walked to a pile of gray rocks, reminiscing how the same spot was a glacier just a few years ago. At an altitude of 4,000m, the 35-year-old researcher is surrounded by the giant peaks of the towering Tian Shan range that also stretches into China, Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan. The area is home to thousands of glaciers that are melting at an alarming rate in Central Asia, already hard-hit by climate change. A glaciologist, Omarova is recording that process — worried about the future. She hiked six hours to get to
The number of people in Japan aged 100 or older has hit a record high of more than 95,000, almost 90 percent of whom are women, government data showed yesterday. The figures further highlight the slow-burning demographic crisis gripping the world’s fourth-biggest economy as its population ages and shrinks. As of Sept. 1, Japan had 95,119 centenarians, up 2,980 year-on-year, with 83,958 of them women and 11,161 men, the Japanese Ministry of Health said in a statement. On Sunday, separate government data showed that the number of over-65s has hit a record high of 36.25 million, accounting for 29.3 percent of