Photographer Sentenced to Two Years in Burmese Prison

From Reporters Without Borders…

Reporters Without Borders and the Burma Media Association are outraged by the two-year sentence passed today on Ein Khaing Oo, a 24-year-old woman journalist employed by the weekly Ecovision Journal, for taking photos of Cyclone Nargis victims. She was arrest in Rangoon last June.

“This unjust sentence comes amid a wave of unprecedented sentences for journalists and activists,” the two organisations said. “We appeal to Burma’s military authorities to free Ein Khaing Oo, whose only crime was to cover the humanitarian disaster in the Irrawaddy delta.”

This is an insane story. Hot on the heels of the UK cracking down on cops harassing photographers for doing nothing wrong, there are countries which take this stuff to the extreme. And it just keeps getting worse too.

Another journalist, Zaw Thet Htwe, and a blogger, Zarganar, are also being held for helping Nargis victims.

Not only does this sort of thing show a complete lack of respect for humans rights (among other things), there really isn’t much that can be done from the outside beyond pushing for political pressure.

There have been so many such arrests in Burma that there has been a website created to be a central source of information about the victims of these arrests, protests, petitions, etc. You can find that at www.fbppn.net.