Cheers erupted in a small courtroom in Yangon’s Shwepyithar Township this morning as the judge in 24-year-old Burmese poet Maung Saungkha’s case sentenced him to six months for online defamation.
Why is that good news? Because he has been in Insein Prison since he was arrested in November, so the sentence amounts to time served and he will be released today.
Saungkha was tracked down by police on November 5 a few weeks after he posted a poem to his Facebook account in which the narrator claims to have a tattoo of the president on his penis.
Authorities assumed he meant then-President Thein Sein and charged him with online defamation under Article 66d of the Telecommunications Act.
The article has been used to charge several people for Facebook posts deemed defamatory.
Outside the courtroom, Saungkha hugged friends and relatives and posed for a photo with members of the National League for Democracy, who came for the verdict.
Saungkha is a member of the NLD’s regional youth wing.
Although he was happy to be released, he was obviously not pleased to have spent six months and 19 days in prison for writing a poem.
“This section 66d is really not just,” he told reporters after the verdict.“I don’t really care about this law,” he said, vowing to keep writing poems.
He also described his time in Insein.
“I was enclosed 16 hours a day and I lost my rights and I couldn’t do what I should do.”
Since Aung San Suu Kyi’s NLD took power in April, they have pardoned or amnestied several prisoners. This case, however, seemed to run its course without any intervention from the party.
