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Myanmar arrests two journalists working for news magazine
The Associated Press
Monday, February 18, 2008
YANGON, Myanmar: Authorities have arrested two Myanmar journalists in the
military-ruled country and the reason for their detention was not
immediately known, their colleagues said Monday.
Police arrested Myanmar Nation magazine's editor in chief Thet Zin and
manager Sein Win Maung at their office Friday, several colleagues said on
condition of anonymity, citing fears of official reprisal.
The colleagues said police searched the magazine's office in Myanmar's
largest city, Yangon, before the arrests, but did not explain why the two
journalists were taken away.
Myanmar Nation is a private weekly magazine with a very small circulation.
Aung Din, executive director of the Wa****ngton-based U.S. Campaign for
Burma
— an anti-junta lobbying group — said police found and confiscated the
arrested men's mobile phones, a copy of a re****t on Myanmar by a senior
U.N.
Human Rights official, a book by an ethnic group leader on federalism and
some video CDs containing images of a government crackdown on
pro-democracy
activists last September.
Troops last September crushed pro-democracy protests led by Buddhist
monks,
killing dozens of demonstrators. They also raided monasteries and arrested
thousands of people.
Several Myanmar journalists working for publications in Yangon were beaten
up by police and soldiers while attempting to cover the demonstrations.
The regime said 10 people were killed during the crackdown, but human
rights
groups say the death toll was far higher. Paulo Sergio Pinheiro, a senior
U.N. human rights official, said in a re****t at least 31 died in Yangon.
Police also confiscated poems by Sein Win Maung that were critical of the
junta when they searched the magazine's office, Aung Din said, citing
witnesses in Myanmar.
Ex-activist Thet Zin has heart and lung problems. He was arrested and
tortured in 1988 for involvement in student pro-democracy protests at
Rangoon University, and was occasionally detained and interrogated by
officials throughout the 1990s, Aung Din said in an e-mail message.
He wrote poems and short stories for magazines under the pen name of Maung
Zin and worked as a re****ter and editor for several weekly journals before
founding Myanmar Nation in 2006.
Myanmar, also known as Burma, has been under military rule since 1962 and
has not had a constitution since the last one was scrapped in 1988, when
the
army violently suppressed pro-democracy demonstrations and the current
junta
took power.
http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2008/02/18/asia/AS-POL-Myanmar-Journalists-Arrested.php
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