A prominent US-based media rights organization has written to President Htin Kyaw, urging the new government to strengthen legal protections on press freedom, and ensure that reporters can practice their profession independently and without fear of reprisal.
The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) commended the government for granting a presidential pardon to four reporters and the CEO of Unity Journal. The five were serving seven-year prison sentences with hard labor, under the colonial-era State Secrets Act, for a series of investigative reports in January 2014 on what they claimed was a secret chemical weapons factory run by the Burma Army.
The CPJ letter also welcomed the government’s recent move to abolish the 1950 Emergency Provisions Act, a law that former military-backed governments in Burma have used to prosecute and imprison journalists for reporting news deemed detrimental to broadly defined “national security.” (Courtesy of irrawaddy.com)
No comments:
Post a Comment