Myanmar: Amnesty International denounces Gambira sentence


A Myanmar court on Tuesday jailed former monk and leader of the 2007 anti-junta uprising U Gambira for six months with hard labor on immigration charges, a member of his defense team said.

"The case against Gambira is yet another reminder of the challenges facing the new government when it comes to ending the cycle of political arrests and imprisonment in Myanmar," said Laura Haigh, Amnesty International's Myanmar researcher. "The new administration must redouble their efforts
to ensure that no prisoner of conscience is left behind bars, and expedite efforts to amend the country's repressive legal framework, which for too long has been used to arrest and imprison peaceful activists. As long as these laws are on the books, human rights defenders in Myanmar will
remain at risk of arrest and imprisonment."

Background

U Gambira was arrested in Mandalay, Myanmar's second largest city, on 19 January 2016, days after arriving from Thailand to apply for a Myanmar passport. He was later charged with entering the country illegally under Section 13(1) of Myanmar's 1947 Immigration (Emergency Provisions) Act, a law
which has been used in the past to charge individuals in politically motivated cases.

U Gambira is a former prisoner of conscience, detained in 2007 for his role leading mass anti-government protests, also known as the "Saffron Revolution", in August and September of that year. The authorities brought the protests to an end with a violent crackdown in late September 2007, and U
Gambira was sentenced in November 2008 to a 68-year prison sentence under several different laws. He was released in a presidential amnesty on 13 January 2012.

U Gambira was repeatedly tortured during his years in detention and today he suffers from serious mental health issues, including post-traumatic stress disorder, as a result of his years in prison. In recent years he has been living in Thailand where was receiving specialist medical treatment.