Go to >> [ 2008: Jan-Mar | Apr-Jun | Jul-Sep | Oct-Dec ]

[ 2007: Jan-Mar | Apr-Jun | Jul-Sep | Oct-Dec ] [ 2006: Jan-Mar | Apr-Jun | Jul-Dec ] [ 2005: Jan-Mar | Apr-Jun | Jul-Sep | Oct-Dec ]

[ 2004: Jan-May | Jun-Dec ] [ 2003: Jan-Mar | Apr-Dec ] [ 2002: Jan-Mar | Apr-Jun | Jul-Sep | Oct-Dec ] [ 2001: Jan-Dec ]

Press Release

Reporters Without Borders activists held at Burmese embassy in Paris

Two Reporters Without Borders representatives have been held for two hours, with a French police officer, inside the Burmese embassy in Paris. Other activists were surrounded by policemen outside. Reporters Without Borders went to the embassy in an attempt to give a letter to the ambassador, who refused it. The embassy has threatened to file a complaint against Reporters Without Borders.

Win Tin, Burma’s most famous journalist, will celebrate his 75th birthday tomorrow in his cell in Rangoon’s sadly notorious Insein prison, Reporters Without Borders and the Burma Media Association said today. Since his arrest on 4 July 1989, he has been deprived of his basic rights, in particular, the right to receive proper medical treatment and the right to be able to write.

Despite recent announcements that he would be included in the release of a number of detainees, the military junta did not free this respected intellectual, who is serving a 20-year prison sentence for various alleged offences including “anti-government propaganda.”

Win Tin has had two heart attacks since he was imprisoned. For several years, the septuagenarian has had to spend frequent spells in a Rangoon hospital where a number of small rooms are reserved for prisoners.

Reporters Without Borders and the Burma Media Association take action

Reporters Without Borders activists today gave the Burmese ambassador to France symbolic birthday presents labeled "Pens", "Medicine" and "Newspapers" items which the Burmese authorities have denied Win Tin for the past 16 years.

Burmese journalists and foreign correspondents met at the Foreign Correspondents Club in the Thai capital of Bangkok yesterday. They heard Zin Linn, one of Win Tin’s former fellow detainees, describe the man they call Saya, the Sage. They also heard Burmese reporter Khin Maung Win and British journalist Larry Jagan describe their experiences in Burma and the constraints under which the Burmese press has to work.

A symbolic gift for Win Tin was also presented today during a press conference in the international tourism fair in Berlin by a representative of the German section of Reporters Without Borders.

The Burma Media Association has devoted a special issue of its Burmese-language magazine Oodan entirely to Win Tin. It contains articles he wrote and tributes from Burmese writers and international figures.

Reporters Without Borders has also produced a Win Tin poster that shows him behind bars and has the words: "Happy 75th Birthday to Win Tin, in prison for the past 16 years." And the Reporters Without Borders website had made Win Tin the subject of its “Journalist in the news” special page, in English, French and Spanish.

PARIS, March 11 (AFP) - About 20 members of the Paris-based media watchdog group Reporters without Borders (RSF) entered Myanmar's embassy on Friday to demand the release of U Win Tin, one of the country's best-known journalists.

U Win Tin, a key opposition figure, was arrested in July 1989 and sentenced to 20 years of hard labor. He turns 75 on Saturday, having spent more than one-fifth of his life in prison.

"We came to bring symbolic birthday gifts, as well as a letter demanding his liberation. We gained entry to the embassy, words were exchanged but we were not touched," RSF secretary general Robert Menard told AFP.

Embassy personnel briefly detained Menard and another colleague, threatening to bring legal action against them, but Menard said they were released and taken to police headquarters for questioning.

The rights group Amnesty International also renewed its call for U Win Tin's release on Friday, saying he was in poor health, worsened by inadequate access to medical care. Amnesty charged that the journalist -- Myanmar's longest-serving prisoner of conscience -- was being held in a dog cage, without bedding, and being deprived of food and water for long periods of time.

A fourth journalist, Ohn Kyaing, aged 60, was released on 3 January 2005, from Toungoo jail north of Rangoon.

He had been arrested in September 1990 by agents of the Military Intelligence Service (MIS) and sentenced to 17 years in prison for "writing and distributing seditious pamphlets" and "threatening state security".

Less than 24 hours after his release, Ohn Kyaing went on 4 January to the headquarters of the National League for Democracy (NLD) in Rangoon to take part in Independence Day celebrations.

The journalist and NLD elected member of parliament wrote many articles under the pen name Aung Wint in newspapers such as Hanthawathi and Botahtaung from which he was dismissed by the authorities.

He suffered from high blood pressure in prison and his friends and family said he was extremely tired. While in jail, he taught English, journalism and international relations to younger prisoners.

Press Release

Reporters Without Borders and the Burma Media Association warmly welcomed the release of journalists Zaw Thet Htwe, Thein Tan and Aung Myint but urged the military junta to release 9 other journalists, including the most prominent of them, U Win Tin.

The two released men were among thousands of prisoners freed on 3 January. The government-ruled radio said the releases were linked to their "good behaviour and contribution to the state during their imprisonment".

The two press freedom organisations called on the government of General Soe Win to comply with its promises to free all prisoners, in particular all the journalists, who were unfairly arrested and sentenced by the former Military Intelligence Service (MIS).

Sports journalist Zaw Thet Htwe was freed on the morning of 3 January from Insein Prison in Rangoon. He had been successively condemned to death, then to three years in prison for "high treason", in connection with a never substantiated assassination attempt against junta leaders.

His arrest was really linked to the success of the football specialist sports magazine First Eleven that he edited and its independent editorial line. An officer in the MIS wanted to get rid of an awkward journalist.

More than 6,000 people signed a petition for the release of Zaw Thet Htwe that was launched by Amnesty International and Reporters Without Borders during the last European football Cup.

Aung Myint, better known under the name of Phyapon Ni Loan Oo, was also released from Insein Prison on 3 January where he was serving a 21-year prison sentence under emergency legislation passed in 1950 and a 1908 law on illegal organisations.

The journalist, poet and the head of the information department at the National League for Democracy (NLD) in Rangoon, was arrested on 14 September 2000 for giving articles to the international press about the plight of NLD leader Aung San Suu Kyi. At the time she had been blockaded for several days in open country by the military determined to prevent her from leaving Rangoon by car.

At the time of her arrest, Aung Myint was banned from writing for the Burmese press, following an earlier two-year period of imprisonment for his stance against the dictatorship. He worked successively for the magazines Pay-Phu-Hlwar and Cherry.

Renowned journalist and bookseller Thein Tan, aged 74, from central Mandalay was released from Thayet Prison, north of Rangoon. He was arrested and sentenced in 1990 to ten years in prison for articles he wrote about the death of four demonstrators in August 1990. He should have been freed in December 2000 but the authorities added an unspecified amount of time to his sentence. Thein Tan resigned in the mid-1980s from the government newspaper Kyemon to work with opposition magazines. He was also one of the leaders of the National League for Democracy (NLD) in Mandalay, Burma's cultural capital.