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Myanmar Court Hands Japanese Journalist 3 More Years in Jail

BANGKOK – A courtroom in military-ruled Myanmar on Wednesday convicted a Japanese journalist of violating immigration regulation, including three years to the seven-year jail sentence he was handed final week for filming an anti-government protest, a Japanese diplomat mentioned.

Toru Kubota, a Tokyo-based documentary filmmaker, was arrested on July 30 by plainclothes police in Yangon, the nation’s largest metropolis, after taking photographs and movies of a small flash protest towards final 12 months’s army takeover.

He was sentenced final week to seven years for violating the digital transactions regulation and three years for incitement, with the sentences to be served concurrently.

Tetsuo Kitada, deputy chief of mission of the Japanese Embassy, instructed The Associated Press the courtroom heard the immigration case Wednesday and gave Kubota a three-year sentence, bringing the overall time he should serve in jail to 10 years.

Since the army seized energy final 12 months, ousting the elected civilian authorities of Aung San Suu Kyi, it has cracked down on protection of protests, raided media firms and detained dozens of journalists. It has revoked the media licenses of a minimum of 12 retailers and arrested 142 journalists, 54 of whom stay detained.

Most of these detained are being held on the incitement cost for allegedly inflicting concern, spreading false news or agitating towards a authorities worker.

Some of the closed media retailers have continued working with out licenses, and plenty of Myanmar journalists are working underground, transferring from one protected home to a different, hiding in distant border areas or basing themselves in exile.

Kubota was the fifth international journalist detained in Myanmar after the army seized energy. U.S. residents Nathan Maung and Danny Fenster, who labored for native publications, and freelancers Robert Bociaga of Poland and Yuki Kitazumi of Japan have been ultimately deported earlier than having to serve full jail sentences.

Kitada mentioned he couldn’t speculate on whether or not Kubota can be deported, however his embassy would proceed to do its greatest for his launch. Myanmar’s relations with Japan, traditionally shut, are much less strained than with Western nations, which ostracize the army authorities with political and financial sanctions due to its takeover and poor human rights document.

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