H.E. Than Shwe
Prime Minister and Chairman
of the State Law & Order Development Council
Office of the Chairman
Signal Pagoda Road
Yangon
Union of Myanmar
Fax: (011.95.1) 28-02-87
Your Excellency:
We write as representatives of the Overseas Press Club of America (OPC) to protest the arrest on
July 27th of a documentary film maker, Lazing La Htoi, for filming the flood in the north of Myanmar.
According to several agencies that monitor events in Myanmar, La Htoi owns the Htoi San Press in Myitkyina. He has been making documentaries on humanitarian issues for many years for the Metta Foundation. It was just such an assignment that led him to film the devastating flooding in the north, whose existence your government refuses to acknowledge. The floods reportedly claimed about 50 lives and damaged 5,000 homes. La Htoi’s film showed one of the victims and the extent of the damage.
Your government may succeed to some extent in suppressing the news of the flooding, since you have apparently seized all 50 copies of the CDs that La Htoi made and closed the studio that made them.
But to what purpose? Is any government so perfect that floods are not supposed to happen? Other regimes that suppress freedom of expression permit, as a practical matter, news of natural disasters as
a means to winning foreign aid and sympathy.
The OPC has been representing the right of journalists around the world for nearly 70 years.
We urgently request that you free La Htoi. His case brings to mind that of Zaw Thet Htwe, editor of
a popular sports journal, who, like La Htoi, was not involved in political journalism or activism. Thet Htwe’s alleged crime was to expose irregularities among Burmese sports officials. For that he was sentenced to death — a punishment so extreme even to your government that last May it was reduced to three years in prison.
Neither La Htoi nor Zaw Thet Thwe have done anything not protected by international law, universally acknowledged principles of human rights nor even plain common sense. We trust they will soon regain their freedom.
Respectfully yours,
Jeremy Main Kevin McDermott
Freedom of the Press Committee
cc: Khin Nyunt
Prime Minister
Office of the Prime Minister
Yangon
Union of Myanmar
U Linn Myaing
Ambassador of Myanmar to the U.S.A.
Embassy of the Union of Myanmar
2300 S Street, NW
Washington, DC 20008
Fax: (202) 332-9046
Ambassador U Kyaw Tint Swe
Permanent Representative
Permanent Mission of the Union of Myanmar
to the United Nations
10 East 77th Street
New York, NY 10021
Fax: (212) 737-2421
Carmen Martinez
U.S. Ambassador to Myanmar
Embassy of the United States of America
581 Merchant Street
Rangoon
Myanmar
Fax: (011.95.1) 25-60-18