"When Myanmar security officials arrested journalist Kyaw Myat Hlaing for his news coverage of anti-military protests in his hometown of Myeik, they shot their firearms into his house before launching their raid. Video footage of the attack has been viewed over 2.5 million times on Facebook, where Kyaw Myat Hlaing, a video reporter with the Democratic Voice of Burma (DVB), livestreamed the late-night assault that resulted in his March 1 arrest. His arrest is emblematic of the crackdown on the press since Myanmar’s military deposed de facto democratic leader Aung San Suu Kyi in a February 1 coup and rounded up dozens of members of the media. Myanmar has quickly gone from imprisoning a single reporter to ranking as one of the world’s worst jailers of journalists, the Committee to Protect Journalists found in a special mid-year survey. At least 32 journalists were imprisoned in Myanmar because of their work as of July 1. That total is down from at least 45 journalists jailed on June 27; on the last day of June, authorities released more than 2,000 detainees, including 13 journalists, according to news reports and the Assistance Association of Political Prisoners (AAPP), a local rights group. It wasn’t immediately clear if any of those released still faced charges. On December 1, 2020, when CPJ conducted its annual global census of imprisoned journalists worldwide, Myanmar reported only one journalist in prison. China (48), Turkey (47), Saudi Arabia (26) and Egypt (26) were the worst jailers worldwide at that time. Meanwhile, Kyaw Myat Hlaing has been sentenced to three years in prison under Article 505(a) of Myanmar’s penal code, a broad and vaguely worded provision leveled against many of the reporters languishing behind bars. At least three reporters have been sentenced to prison terms under Article 505(a) since the coup; the rest were awaiting trial or being held on unclear charges. Myanmar held over 5,100 political prisoners as of July 1, according to the AAPP. Penal code amendments implemented two weeks after the coup made it easier to prosecute and jail journalists through the broadening of Article 505(a) to include penalties for spreading “false news.” The provision now criminalizes “any attempt to cause fear, spread false news or agitate directly or indirectly a criminal offense against a government employee” or that “causes their hatred, disobedience, or disloyalty toward the military and the government.” The amendments also increased maximum prison sentences under the law from two to three years. The breadth of the new wording prompted CPJ to classify Article 505(a) as both an anti-state charge and a “false news” charge — two types of legal accusations tracked since CPJ first collected global prison data in 1992. The number of journalists worldwide jailed on false news charges has steadily increased in recent years, and CPJ has documented the proliferation of new laws that criminalize it. In Myanmar, the use of 505(a) since the coup has effectively made independent journalism a crime under the junta’s emergency rule, which military authorities have said will remain in place for at least one year while authorities conduct investigations into Suu Kyi and her ousted National League for Democracy (NLD) government’s alleged electoral fraud. Journalists and editors familiar with recent trial proceedings told CPJ that prosecutors and judges are under military pressure to rule against journalists on security rather than media laws, including the 2014 News Media Law, which protects press freedoms and bars custodial penalties for media-related offenses. “We don’t accept the detention and sentencing of any of our DVB reporters or any other journalists being detained or sentenced in Burma (Myanmar),” said Aye Chan Naing, editor-in-chief of the Democratic Voice of Burma, an independent local media outlet. “Their cases are being decided by kangaroo courts,” he said. Two DVB journalists have been sentenced to prison terms while another is in detention awaiting trial..."