Media Watchdogs Urge Release of Journalists

Two international media watchdog groups urged Burma’s prime minister on Tuesday to free detained journalists, a week after the military government announced it would release nearly 4,000 prisoners improperly punished.

In a joint statement, Paris-based Reporters Without Borders, or RSF, and the Burma Media Association, or BMA, called on Prime Minister Lt-Gen Soe Win to keep his promise and quickly release prominent journalist Win Tin and 12 other journalists. The BMA was founded by Burmese journalists and writers in exile.

Win Tin, 74

“They [the journalists] were all sentenced for false reasons and at unfair trials,” the press release said. “They should all benefit from the decision to release prisoners detained unfairly by former secret service heads.”

The government announced on Nov 18 that it intended releasing 3,937 prisoners it said had been improperly jailed by the recently dissolved National Intelligence Bureau, or NIB. The NIB, dissolved on Oct 22, was an umbrella intelligence and investigatory organization chaired by ousted prime minister Gen Khin Nyunt.

Several hundred prisoners, including about 30 political detainees, were freed on Friday, but the release has since been suspended.

Veteran journalist Win Tin, 74, is still being detained in Insein Prison, his close friend Maung Maung Khin said Wednesday in a phone interview.

Win Tin, who is also a senior member of the opposition National League for Democracy, or NLD, has been imprisoned since 1989. At least 13 journalists are in jail, according to RSF and BMA.

Two of them, Aung Pwint and Thaung Tun, were honored with the 2004 International Press Freedom Award by the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists, or CPJ, on Tuesday night.

According to CPJ, the two Burmese journalists and four other journalists from Belarus, Burundi, Russia and the United States were honored for their “extraordinary courage in the face of great personal risk”.

Editors and documentary filmmakers Aung Pwint and Thaung Tun, also known as Nyein Thit, were arrested in 1999 and sentenced to eight years imprisonment.