Arrested for drone flight

MYANMAR police have arrested a French national in the capital, Naypyitaw, police and France’s embassy said yesterday, after the man reportedly flew a drone near parliament.

Naypyitaw is not a common destination for foreign tourists, but some curious visitors are drawn to its oversized official buildings and largely empty, runway-like roads.

The junta constructed the city in secret and moved the country’s administration there in the mid-2000s.

In 2017, two foreign journalists for Turkish state TV station TRT World and their interpreter spent two months in a Myanmar jail for flying a drone over the legislature.

Local media said police detained the man on a bridge at the entrance to Naypyitaw’s sprawling parliament complex on Thursday, and that he was accused of illegally importing the drone. The legal status of drones in Myanmar is unclear.