Burma: Monk Imprisoned Over Alleged Anti-Government Activity
By William Gomes
24 June, 2010
Countercurrents.org
Asian Human Rights Commission (AHRC) has obtained detailed information
about a case of a monk U Gawthita in Burma who has been imprisoned
for alleged anti-government activity. AHRC said the authorities
accused U Gawthita of travelling to Thailand unlawfully and getting
support from groups there. A court imprisoned him for seven years
without evidence. Gawthita, who was not involved in the September 2007
anti-government protests, claims that he was obtaining support from
abroad to continue relief efforts for cyclone victims.
AHRC said U Gawthita and seven other months were detained at the
airport in Rangoon on their return from Taiwan in August 2009. The
authorities later released the other monks but accused Gawthita of
having met and obtained support from anti-government groups in
Thailand. They kept him at a special interrogation facility for a
month before he was charged with having allegedly gone to Thailand
illegally earlier in the year to meet with and get support from
anti-government groups there.
AHRC also said Gawthita, who had no involvement in earlier political
activism by monks in Burma, denies the charges and according to him he
was merely collecting support for relief of cyclone victims and other
humanitarian activities. Politically-active monks from Burma in
Thailand have also denied that he came to met them. Photographs that
the police used in court to show that Gawthita had gone to meet exile
monks were not taken in Thailand at all but at an earlier time in
Burma.
Among other so-called evidence that the police presented in court
against Gawthita were trivial sums of money in various currencies,
from less than a thousand US dollars to a single Malaysian Ringgit,
and some computers and other appliances some of which had been
confiscated from other monks with whom he had been travelling said
AHRC
According to the source the supposed currency offence was not only
absurd because of the amounts involved but also illegally laid because
the police detained Gawthita as soon as he arrived in the airport and
before he had time to declare currency or other items in his
possession in accordance with the law. In other words, the police
pre-empted the possibility of any criminal offence being committed.
AHRC said the closed court ignored the lack of evidence and other
flaws in the case, and in February 2010 sentenced Gawthita to seven
years in jail. AHRC urged to UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention
and the regional human rights office for Southeast Asia for
interventions into this case.
Human rights organization Christian Development Alternative (CDA)
expressed its solidarity and expressed its concern for U Gawthita who
was arrested in Myanmar have imprisoned inexplicably, instead of
lauding him for his efforts to raise funds with which to give
continued support to cyclone victims.
CDA urge the concerned authorities to ensure the release of Gawthita
without delay.CDA also remind the Government of Myanmar of the need to
allow the International Committee of the Red Cross access to places of
detention, in accordance with its globally recognized mandate,
including to all those monks and nuns imprisoned in the aftermath of
the September 2007 protests, and to ensure that all prisoners obtain
appropriate medical treatment, have access to family members and are
otherwise treated humanely and appropriately.
