Myanmar activist says police to lay more charges against him

YANGON: Myanmar student activist Zayya Lwin said yesterday that police planned to press additional charges against him after he was detained on the weekend following a peace rally and criticised police at a poemreading event in Yangon two days later.

Zayya Lwin, 27, is one of 17 organisers of the anti-war protest which on Saturday degenerated into scuffles and fistfights, raising fresh concerns about freedom of speech in the Southeast Asian nation.

The 17 organisers now face a month in prison and fines for ‘disturbing the public’ and other offences.

Zayya Lwin and seven other detained activists were released from arrest on Sunday.

On Monday, he attended a poem-reading gathering at a park in downtown Yangon. After the event, Zayya Lwin said officers told him they would charge him under section 19 of Myanmar’s peaceful assembly law — an offence that could see him sentenced to additional three months in jail.

“They stopped me while I was giving a talk. They came later, and told me they will charge me under section 19, but didn’t give a reason why,” said Zayya Lwin.

“They asked me to come along to the police station, but I refused and told them to send me an official letter laying out the charges,” Zayya Lwin told Reuters by phone.

A growing anti-war youth movement, which in recent months has spread to various parts of the country, has exposed frustration with Myanmar’s defacto leader Aung San Suu Kyi’s struggle to fulfill a promise to end decades of war by autonomy-seeking ethnic minority guerrillas in lawless border lands.

More than 6,000 people have fled their homes since an army offensive against the Kachin Independence Army ( KIA), and ethnic rebel group.

Rescue workers say hundreds are still trapped in danger zones. — Reuters