A Myanmar court sentenced two Aung San Suu Kyi supporters to 165 years in prison

[ASEAN NOW Content Team]

 

Former Kayin state ministers were sentenced to 90 and 75 years in prison, respectively, while US journalist Danny Fenster was charged with additional crimes.

After finding them guilty of corruption, a Myanmar court sentenced two members of former leader Aung San Suu Kyi's political party to 90 and 75 years in prison, respectively, according to their lawyer.

The penalties handed down on Tuesday appeared to be the harshest yet for any of the dozens of members of Aung San Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy imprisoned after the military took control on February 1.

 

It happened on the same day that an American journalist who has been imprisoned in Myanmar for more than five months was charged with two more charges on top of the three he currently facing, according to his lawyer.

The Counter-Terrorism Act is one of the new charges filed against Danny Fenster.
Contacts with officially classified "terrorist" groups are illegal under the statute, which carries a sentence of three to seven years in jail.

The other offence under section 124(A) of the penal code is treason, which carries a sentence of seven to twenty years in jail if he is convicted.

 

On the 24th of May, Fenster was arrested at Yangon International Airport as he was ready to catch a trip to see his family in the United States.
He works as the managing editor of Frontier Myanmar, an online news publication situated in Yangon, Myanmar's capital.

Former Kayin state planning minister Than Naing was convicted of six corruption charges and sentenced to 90 years in jail, including labour, by a state court on Tuesday, according to lawyer Zaw Min Hlaing.

 

According to Zaw Min Hlaing, the second defendant, Nan Khin Htwe Myint, 67, a former chief minister of Kayin state and a prominent member of Aung San Suu Kyi's political party, was sentenced to 15 years in jail on each of the five charges.

Since the military assumed power, Myanmar has been wracked by bloodshed and civil turmoil.
Protesters who were beaten, shot, and arrested as a result of the takeover have increasingly turned to armed resistance, and insurgents are active in many places of the country.

 

Aung San Suu Kyi is also facing charges of corruption and other crimes, which her supporters claim were made up to undermine her and legitimise the military's takeover.
Any conviction would effectively bar her from competing in the 2023 elections promised by the military-installed government.

 

Nan Khin Htwe Myin, a member of the party's central executive committee, is a long-time pro-democracy activist who was arrested for the first time in 1974 during a student protest against the former military administration.
She was detained at least two more times before being elected to the state legislature in 2012 and 2015, and then appointed as a state minister.
She is well-known for being Aung San Suu Kyi's close comrade.

On February 2, she was detained by troops and placed under house arrest, where she aired a livestreamed message asking for civil disobedience in the face of the army takeover on February 8, she was arrested.