A court attached to Rangoon’s Insein Prison sentenced Nyi Nyi Tun, editor of the Kandarawaddy, a news journal based in Karenni state, to 13 years in prison in October 2010, a year after his initial detention.
The court found Nyi Nyi Tun guilty of several antistate crimes, including violations of the Unlawful Association, Immigration, and Wireless acts, according to Mizzima, a Burmese exile-run news agency, and the Asian Human Rights Commission.
Nyi Nyi Tun was initially detained on terrorism charges in October 2009, according to the Assistance Association for Political Prisoners in Burma, a Thailand-based advocacy organization. Authorities originally tried to connect him to a series of bomb blasts in Rangoon, but apparently dropped the allegations.
Nyi Nyi Tun told his family members that he had been tortured during his interrogation, Mizzima reported. The reported torture lasted for six days and included sodomy and repeated kicks to the head and face, according to the assistance association. Nyi Nyi Tun suffers from partial paralysis. He was among a group of 15 prisoners who staged a hunger strike in October 2011 to protest their continued detention.
After his arrest in 2009, Burmese authorities shut down Kandarawaddy, a local-language journal that operated out of the Kayah special region near the country’s eastern border, according to the Burma Media Association, a press freedom advocacy group.