Free expression advocate PEN America has called on the government to repeal its controversial Telecommunications Act after it was used to convict a 24-year-old poet for verse posted on Facebook last year.
Maung Saungkha was convicted to six months in prison on Tuesday, but as he has already spent the duration of the sentence behind bars, he was immediately released.
“PEN America is delighted that poet Maung Saungkha has been released from prison today [Tuesday] in Myanmar but is deeply concerned by remaining barriers to free expression in the country,” the group said in a statement in response to the verdict.
“PEN calls on newly elected President Htin Kyaw, who is a fellow writer, to protect the right to freedom of expression, a crucial pillar of any true democracy,” Karin Deutsch Karlekar, director of Free Expression Programs at PEN, said in the statement.
“The government must repeal the Telecommunications Law and other legislation outlined in PEN’s 2015 report on free expression in Myanmar, Unfinished Freedom, that perpetuate a repressive legal framework with which to chill speech and punish citizens for simply expressing themselves,” she added.
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.
Aung San Suu Kyi’s new government is looking at a number of laws used in the past to convict or harass activists, but so far they have only watered down legislation used to crack down on protests.
