Editor faces 10 years in jail
A LEADING journalist from the Burmese weekly Myanmar Nation was arrested in February after police and intelligence officials conducted a four-hour search of the office.
Chief Editor Thet Zin was held along with office manager Sein Win Maung. Thet Zin was able to meet his wife in a police station three days later and told her he was facing a 10-year sentence, though he did not know what he had been charged with.
The next day police returned to the Myanmar Nation office for a three-hour search and seized data from Thet Zin’s computer. They then closed the office. Myanmar Nation was published with clearance from the official censorship board.
Thet Zin had been a student democracy activist before working for various weekly journals. He was arrested and tortured in the pro-democracy uprising of 1988.