(RSF/IFEX) – RSF has welcomed the 9 April 2004 release of photographer and cameraman Khin Maung Win, also known as “Sunny”, who completed a seven-year sentence. Khin Maung Win worked for the opposition National League for Democracy (NLD). He was arrested on 13 June 1997 along with four other NLD members after filming an interview […]
(RSF/IFEX) – RSF has welcomed the 9 April 2004 release of photographer and cameraman Khin Maung Win, also known as “Sunny”, who completed a seven-year sentence.
Khin Maung Win worked for the opposition National League for Democracy (NLD). He was arrested on 13 June 1997 along with four other NLD members after filming an interview with NLD leader and Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi and sending the interview abroad.
RSF welcomed Khin Maung Win’s release but regretted that it did not take place earlier. The organisation also voiced concern about the physical and mental health of the 11 journalists who remain imprisoned and reiterated its call that press freedom be included in the “roadmap to democracy” proposed by the ruling junta.
Now aged 44, Khin Maung Win told the Democratic Voice of Burma radio station that he was in good health but needed time to rebuild his life. With regard to prison conditions, he complained above all that he had been jailed successively in four different prisons in four different parts of the country (Rangoon, Kalay, Loykaw and Khan-tee), which made it hard to organise family visits on the rare occasions they were allowed to visit him.
Both a photographer and cameraman by profession, Khin Maung Win joined the NLD in the early 1990s. His videotape of an interview with Aung San Suu Kyi was screened at a press conference during a summit of the Association of South-East Asian Nations (ASEAN).
Two weeks after his arrest, the head of the Military Intelligence Services, Lt. Gen. Khin Nyunt, accused Khin Maung Win of belonging to a group that was “collaborating with anti-government activists abroad and with militants at home who were bent on destroying the country.” He was given a summary trial and had no opportunity to defend himself.
