- In-Depth
How a chance meeting on a night bus brought down FDA chief
Acting on a tip-off from a fellow passenger, a crusading MP exposed allegations that a top official had skimmed public money to build houses for himself
- In-Depth
‘Skeletons covered in skin’: inside Myanmar’s labour camps
An investigation by Myanmar Now reveals for the first time an account of the horrors that unfolded within the gulag-like prison compounds from those who helped to oversee them.
- News
Despite calls for reform, prisoners continue hard labour in shackles
Months after a report on abuses and corruption in prison labour camps prompted calls for reforms and investigations, little has changed.
- Politics
Second suspect arrested in case of Ko Ni’s killing
A second suspect has been arrested in connection with the high-profile assassination of Ko Ni, a top legal adviser for the ruling National League for Democracy (NLD) party, Burma’s President’s Office announced Friday night. The man, named Aung Win Zaw, 46, is accused of being an accomplice of Kyi Linn, who was arrested after allegedly shooting dead Ko Ni at close range with a pistol in the compound of Rangoon International Airport on Sunday evening. Police apprehended Aung Win Zaw on a bridge over the Salween River in Karen State at 4:20 p.m. on Monday, but his arrest had not been announced until now. Police arrested Kyi Linn, 53, outside the airport compound within minutes of the killing. Police officers and a former fellow prisoner have told Myanmar Now that two suspects had committed crimes together in the past and served lengthy prison sentences in Obo Prison in Mandalay for smuggling Buddha statues to neighbouring countries. They were released in a presidential amnesty in 2014, the sources said. Kyi Linn also served an earlier sentence for the same crime in the late 1980s. Aung Soe, 51, a former fellow inmate at Obo Prison, had told a Myanmar Now reporter on Monday evening — a…
- News
TV show depicts ‘progress’ in Burma’s prisons
Burma’s Ministry of Home Affairs and commercial television channel SkyNet have cooperated to launch a weekly programme that shows how conditions in the country’s notorious prison system are supposedly improving. The 30-minute programme, titled “Rays of Lights That Impact,” was first broadcast Monday on SkyNet’s Home Channel, one of several local channels produced by SkyNet, which also runs dozens of international channels. The show featured lengthy interviews with prison department officers, who explained that prison conditions had improved in recent years and how vocational programmes and Buddhist meditation courses were preparing prisoners for a life beyond the walls. “We organise activities for the prisoners, related with religious practices, health and education, sports and entertainment,” Maung Maung Aye, the director of the Yangon Region Correctional Department, told SkyNet. “We provide vocational training to prisoners so that they are ready to make a living after they are released.” A few minutes were reserved for actual footage from inside Rangoon’s Insein Prison and brief interviews with three female prisoners. Thin Kyaw, an official of the SkyNet Home Channel, said the channel has an actual contract with the Home Affairs Ministry — which is run by the military — obliging it to run daily programmes about activities of the ministry’s various…
