Bangkok, September 6, 2023—Myanmar authorities should release photojournalist Sai Zaw Thaike and stop imprisoning members of the press for doing their jobs, the Committee to Protect Journalists said Wednesday.
On Wednesday, September 6, a military tribunal in Yangon’s Insein Prison sentenced Sai Zaw Thaike to 20 years in prison with hard labor on various charges, including sedition. This is the longest known prison sentence given to a journalist since the February 2021 military coup.
The journalist’s initial indictment also included charges of misinformation and incitement, but it is not immediately clear under which charges he was convicted, Myanmar Now reported. The reporter was not allowed access to a lawyer while in detention or during Wednesday’s one-day trial.
“Myanmar authorities’ grotesque 20-year sentencing of Myanmar Now journalist Sai Zaw Thaike on blatantly bogus charges is an outrage and should be immediately reversed,” said Shawn Crispin, CPJ’s senior Southeast Asia representative. “Myanmar’s junta must stop imprisoning members of the press for merely doing their jobs as reporters.”
Sai Zaw Thaike was arrested on May 23, 2023, while covering the aftermath of Cyclone Mocha in Sittwe, the capital of western Rakhine State, which killed at least 148 people and where many members of the persecuted Rohingya minority were living in internally displaced persons camps, reports said.
“His sentencing is yet another indication that freedom of the press has been completely quashed under the military junta’s rule, and shows the hefty price independent journalists in Myanmar must pay for their professional work,” Myanmar Now Editor-in-Chief Swe Win said in a statement.
Military authorities raided Myanmar Now’s office in Yangon shortly after the February 2021 coup and later revoked the independent news outlet’s publishing license, those reports said.
CPJ’s email to the Myanmar Ministry of Information did not receive a response.
Myanmar was the world’s third-worst jailer of journalists, with at least 42 journalists behind bars, at the time of CPJ’s December 1, 2022, prison census.