Myanmar dispatches: updates and analysis from our law student correspondents in Myanmar Dispatches
Myanmar dispatches: updates and analysis from our law student correspondents in Myanmar
JURIST EXCLUSIVE – These are excerpts from the last full filing from our law student correspondents in Myanmar reporting to JURIST before Myanmar went into Internet blackout on Sunday:
So many things can happen tonight.
At night around 9 am, they send the prisoners who are just released [by the military on Friday] into civilian towns to set fire or to cause chaos. Some prisoners are underage. The military made those kids take drugs and pushed them to create chaos. A police car is caught by civilians last night while they were dropping off prisoners. There were knives and also “drugs” were found on the police’s body. The military is trying to create a scene that we might harm the prisoners but we all choose to respond with kindness. In some townships (especially in Yangon), the prisoners can barely talk or answer questions because they’re not in the right mind (some of them won’t even know about the military coup yet). We will try to help them contact their family soon and offer them shelter till they can go home. Not all prisoners are bad people, they have their reason for going to jail and they should not be treated unfairly, ESPECIALLY the military should not EXPLOIT those kids.
Urgent amendment to penal code – definition of High Treason changed in favor of the military:
They literally prevent us from doing anything that we’re doing to protest:
Section 121 – we can’t call for help from other countries to send aid (like UK and US)
Section 124 (a) – we can’t write any offensive things against the military (like calling them military juntas, crossing out Min Aung Hlaing’s face with red ink)
Section 124 (c) – we can’t bang pots and hint at each other when they come to arrest us at night
Section 124 (d) – Calling out to CDM staffs and CDM supporters
The so-called amendments are made in the penal code only with the signature of Min Aung Hlaing at the end of that paper. No consultation with the legislative body. Min Aung Hlaing is sitting above the law now as he’s manipulating all Legislative, executive, and judicial power solely in his hand.
So, when INJUSTICE becomes LAW,
RESISTANCE becomes our DUTY.
UPDATE 6:20 PM EST – Myanmar is now dark, under military internet blackout. We have not heard from any of our regular law student correspondents for over five hours. If the blackout is ended at 9 AM Myanmar time tonight (9:30 PM EST), as anticipated, we may hear from one or more of them afterward, and we hope we do. For a variety of reasons, however, we still may not.  So we wait.