Journalists who fled Myanmar discover third-country refuge – KIRO 7 Information Seattle

BANGKOK – (AP) – Three journalists from military-ruled Myanmar convicted of illegally entering Thailand after fleeing to Thailand have been sent to a third country where they are safe, their employer said on Monday.

The three employees of the Democratic Voice of Burma, better known as DVB, were arrested on May 9 in the northern Thai province of Chiang Mai, along with two other activists from Myanmar. On May 28, they were each sentenced to a fine of 4,000 baht ($ 128) and seven months in prison, with one year suspended.

Rights groups and journalists’ associations had urged the Thai authorities not to send them back to Myanmar, where it was feared that their safety would be jeopardized by the authorities. The Thai government has relatively warm relations with Myanmar’s military regime.

Myanmar’s junta seized power in February by overthrowing the elected government of Aung San Suu Kyi and has attempted to crush widespread opposition to its takeover with a brutal crackdown that killed hundreds. It has tried to silence independent news media by revoking their licenses and arresting journalists.

All five people convicted of illegal entry in Chiang Mai recently left Thailand for the third country, DVB executive director and editor-in-chief Aye Chan Naing said in a statement emailed. He said, without going into detail, that he could not say where they had been sent, “as the whole case remains very sensitive.”

He thanked “everyone in Thailand and around the world who have helped make their safe passage possible and worked for a positive outcome,” and said the staff would resume their duties in the near future after they have left recovered from their ordeal ”.

At least two other DVB journalists were sentenced to prison terms for their reporting. DVB, an independent broadcast and online news agency, was one of five local media outlets that were banned from broadcasting or publishing in March after their licenses were revoked. Like other banned media companies, it remained operational.

According to the Myanmar Political Prisoner Agency, around 90 journalists have been arrested since the seizure of power, more than half of them still in custody and 33 in hiding. Those still detained include two US citizens, Danny Fenster and Nathan Maung, who worked for the media in Myanmar.

Foreign Minister Antony Blinken said the US had contact with Maung in custody, but did not yet have consular access to Fenster. “We are pushing in every possible way,” Blinken said in a congressional hearing on Monday in Washington.

He reiterated that the US was working to bring the jailed journalists home.

Fenster, the editor-in-chief of the news and business magazine Frontier Myanmar, was arrested at Yangon airport while trying to travel to the Detroit area to visit his family.

Maung is the editor-in-chief of Kamayut Media’s news website in Myanmar. The New York-based Committee for the Protection of Journalists, citing reports in the Myanmar media, said he was arrested in March.

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