“No journalists doing their journalistic activity should be charged with trespassing. “The sentencing of journalists under trespassing charges amounts to bullying,” Toe Zaw Latt, the Yangon bureau chief for Democratic Voice of Burma, said Friday.
In April, after the two were originally sentenced, several private newspapers printed black front pages to protest the cases against them and other journalists. The nominally civilian government that replaced military rule has eased censorship and other measures limiting press freedom, but reporters and publishers still face intimidation through lawsuits. Their sentences were reduced because the appeals court agreed with their lawyer that they had acted in their capacity as journalists. Zaw Pe, a video reporter for the independent Democratic Voice of Burma media group, and Win Myint Hlaing were convicted in April of trespassing and obstructing a civil servant after filming inside an education department office while investigating the selection process for a Japanese scholarship program in 2012. YANGON, Myanmar (AP) - A journalist and his assistant who were imprisoned for filming inside a government office were freed Friday after an appeals court reduced their sentences from one year to three months.
