Former Myanmar colonel who as soon as served as info minister will get 10-year jail time period for sedition

BANGKOK — A former high-profile Myanmar military officer who had served as info minister and presidential spokesperson in a earlier military-backed authorities has been convicted of sedition and incitement, a authorized official mentioned Thursday. He was sentenced to 10 years in jail.

Ye Htut, a 64-year-old retired lieutenant colonel, is the most recent in a sequence of individuals arrested and jailed for writing Facebook posts that allegedly spreading false or inflammatory information. Once occasionally prosecuted, there was a deluge of such authorized actions because the military seized energy from the elected authorities of Aung San Suu Kyi in February 2021.

He was arrested in late October after a navy officer from the Yangon Regional Military Command reportedly filed a change in opposition to him, across the time when some senior navy officers have been purged on different fees, together with corruption. He was convicted on Wednesday, based on the official conversant in the authorized proceedings who insisted on anonymity for concern of being punished by the authorities.

Ye Htut had been the spokesperson from 2013 to 2016 for President Thein Sein in a military-backed authorities and in addition info minister from 2014 to 2016.

After leaving the federal government in 2016, Ye Htut took on the position of a political commentator and wrote books and posted articles on Facebook. For a time, he was a visiting senior analysis fellow on the ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute, a middle for Southeast Asia research in Singapore.

After the military’s 2021 takeover, he usually posted brief private vignettes and journey essays on Facebook wherein he made allusions that have been typically acknowledged to be crucial of Myanmar’s present navy rulers.

The military’s takeover triggered mass public protests that the navy and police responded to with deadly pressure, triggering armed resistance and violence that has escalated right into a civil battle.

The official conversant in the court docket proceedings in opposition to Ye Htut informed The Associated Press that he was sentenced by a court docket in Yangon’s Insein jail to seven years for sedition and three years for incitement. Ye Htut was accused on the premise of his posts on his Facebook account, and didn’t rent a lawyer to signify him at his trial, the official mentioned.

The sedition cost makes disrupting or hindering the work of protection companies personnel or authorities workers punishable by as much as seven years in jail. The incitement cost makes it against the law to publish or flow into feedback that trigger concern, unfold false information, agitate instantly or not directly for legal offences in opposition to a authorities worker – an offense punishable by as much as three years in jail.

However, an announcement from the Ministry of Legal Affairs mentioned he had been charged underneath a unique sedition statute. There was no rationalization for the discrepancy.

According to detailed lists compiled by the Assistance Association for Political Prisoners, a watchdog group primarily based in Thailand, 4,204 civilians have died in Myanmar within the navy authorities’s crackdown on opponents and a minimum of 25,474 folks have been arrested.