Myanmar journalist Sut Ring Pan is serving a 13-year sentence for incitement and terrorism, charges Myanmar’s military regime has used broadly to stifle independent news reporting since staging a democracy-suspending coup in 2021.
Sut Ring Pan, also known by her pen name Pu Noi Tsawms, was arrested by plainclothes soldiers on September 29, 2024, in Yangon’s Mingala Taungnyunt Township, according to news reports, a statement by the exile-run Independent Myanmar Journalists Association (IMJA), and Kyor Khine, a family intermediary who communicated with CPJ via messaging app.
She was initially detained at the military-run Yay Kyi Ai interrogation center, where she was held for 22 days before being transferred to the township’s police station and later Yangon’s Insein Prison, the IMJA statement and Kyor Khine said.
On May 16, 2025, an Insein Prison court sentenced Sut Ring Pan to three years in prison under Section 505(a) of the penal code, an anti-state provision that criminalizes incitement and fake news, those sources said.
On December 2, a Yangon court convicted and sentenced her to an additional 10 years under Section 50(j) of the Counterterrorism Law, bringing her total sentence to 13 years, the sources said. Her family had kept her case confidential until the terrorism sentencing in hopes of leniency, Kyor Khine said.
Soldiers assaulted the journalist during interrogations, resulting in injuries to her chest, hips, and thighs and chronic muscle pain, according to the family intermediary. The journalist’s mother has been allowed to deliver food and supplies during prison visits, the source said.
Sut Ring Pan previously served as a journalist with the local independent The 74 Media and was featured in a Reuters Institute paper on the role of citizen journalists in covering Myanmar’s post-coup conflict.
Myanmar’s Ministry of Information did not respond to CPJ’s emailed request for comment on her conviction, sentencing, and allegations of abuse during interrogation.