Rangoon Trials Continue— at least 19 Condemned Today

By SAW YAN NAING

Trials continued on Thursday in a Rangoon prison courtroom, where at least 19 dissidents were sentenced to up to eleven years imprisonment on charges of disturbing public order, resisting officials on duty and illegal assembly, according to informed sources.

The defendants included 11 members of the opposition National League for Democracy (NLD), including Tin Yu, NLD chairman in Rangoon’s Hlaing Tharyar Township. Each was sentenced by the court in Rangoon’s Insein Prison to seven and half years imprisonment, said prison sources.
The 11 were originally charged in May 2007, while staging a peaceful protest in Hlaing Tharyar Township in western Rangoon, carrying posters and placards bearing the slogan: “Free Daw Aung San Suu Kyi!”
Tin Yu, 72, was treated in hospital in March after he was struck down by an unknown attacker while walking outside his home in Hlaing Tharyar Township.

At least three members of Burma’s Human Rights Defenders and Promoters group were also sentenced on Thursday, said one source close to the group.

A 21-year-old woman leading member of the All Burma Federation of Student Unions, Honey Oo, was sentenced to nine-and-half-years imprisonment on Thursday. Min Han, a strong supporter for pro-democracy activists, was also sentenced to 11 years imprisonment.

Burma’s leading satirist, the popular comedian Zarganar, who organized private aid missions to the cyclone-hit Irrawaddy delta in May, appeared before the court on Thursday but no sentence was pronounced, according to his sister-in-law, Ma Nyein.

More than 60 pro-democracy activists have been sentenced so far this week, some of them to 65 years imprisonment.

The severity of the sentences and the secrecy of the trials have sparked international protest. The UN Secretary General’s office, the US, Britain, Canada, parliamentarians from countries of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations and human rights organizations strongly condemned the court action.

This week’s trials began on Monday, with the sentencing of several activists and a young blogger. On Tuesday, about 39 political activists, including five monks, and 14 members of 88 Generation Students group, were handed prison terms of up to 65 years.

Dissident sources say the court intends to bring to trial all those held in Insein Prison for their involvement in the nationwide uprising in September 2007.