Ex-British ambassador Vicky Bowman jailed in Myanmar for breaching immigration guidelines
Myanmar’s ruling navy jailed on Friday a former British ambassador and her husband for a yr every for breaching immigration guidelines, a junta spokesman stated.
Vicky Bowman, who served as envoy from 2002 to 2006, was detained final month for failing to declare she was dwelling at an tackle totally different from the one listed on her foreigner’s registration certificates.
Htein Lin, a Myanmar nationwide and distinguished artist, was arrested for serving to his spouse reside at an tackle totally different to their registered residence in industrial hub Yangon.
The couple, who’ve a daughter, may have been jailed for as much as 5 years.
Since finishing up a coup final yr, Myanmar’s navy has carried out a bloody clampdown on dissent and battled forces against the takeover. Scores of international nationals have been caught up within the crackdown.
Local media stated the listening to occurred at a court docket inside Yangon’s Insein jail.
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A spokesperson for the United Kingdom’s international ministry stated it will “continue to support Ms Bowman and her family until their case is resolved”.
Ties between Myanmar and its former colonial ruler Britain have soured for the reason that navy’s takeover, with the junta this yr criticising the UK’s current downgrading of its mission within the nation as “unacceptable”.
Before serving as ambassador, Bowman was the second secretary within the British embassy from 1990 to 1993.
She is now director on the Myanmar Centre for Responsible Business and is a fluent Burmese speaker.
Htein Lin took half in a 1988 scholar rebellion in opposition to a former junta, and later spent years underground.
He was arrested in 1998 and imprisoned for allegedly opposing junta rule.
After he was freed in 2004, he got here to the eye of then-ambassador Bowman for a sequence of work he accomplished in jail utilizing smuggled supplies.
She persuaded him to let her take the politically delicate paintings, which depicted his life behind bars, for his personal safety. He later proposed to her throughout a vacation in Britain, and the pair married in 2006.
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SOURED TIES
“The latest reports on the conviction of the former UK ambassador and her Burmese artist husband are extremely concerning,” Amnesty International’s deputy regional director for campaigns Ming Yu Hah stated.
The United Nations Human Rights Office in Geneva stated it was “deeply shocked that the de facto authorities have sought to punish people who have been committed to the development of the country”.
The British authorities has sanctioned a number of military-linked corporations and people following the military’s energy seize.
Bowman and her husband have been arrested the day earlier than London introduced new sanctions on corporations it stated had helped increase funds for the navy throughout its 2017 crackdown on the largely Muslim Rohingya minority.
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Australian economist Sean Turnell — who labored as an adviser to civilian chief Aung San Suu Kyi — was detained shortly after the coup and is accused of breaching the colonial-era official secrets and techniques act.
Japanese filmmaker Toru Kubota is at present being held in Insein jail, after he was arrested final July close to an anti-government rally in Yangon.
He was the fifth international journalist to be detained in Myanmar, after US residents Nathan Maung and Danny Fenster, Robert Bociaga of Poland and Yuki Kitazumi of Japan — all of whom have been later freed and deported.
More than 2,200 individuals have been killed and 15,000 arrested within the navy’s crackdown on dissent because it seized energy, in response to a neighborhood monitoring group.
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