Myanmar junta frees, rearrests student organiser within two days

Military authorities have detained a student union official in Mandalay two days after releasing her from prison in an amnesty earlier this month, according to locals and fellow political detainees. Poe Piti Khaing, joint secretary of the Hpa-An Student Union based in Karen (Kayin) State, was serving a sentence in Mandalay Region’s Myingyan Prison before the junta freed her as part of a broader amnesty on December 2. Police reportedly raided her temporary residence in Mandalay on December 4 and arrested her again, according to her neighbours, who added that authorities were holding her at the Aung Pin Lel police station in Mandalay’s Chanmyathazi Township. Initially arrested after the military coup of February 2021, Poe Piti Khaing faced charges under the Unlawful Associations Act and section 505a of the Penal Code on incitement. The junta sentenced her to five years, holding her at Mandalay’s Obo Prison for a few months before transferring her to Myingyan Prison some seventy miles to the southwest. She stayed with a friend in Myingyan on the night after her early release on December 2, then travelled to Mandalay and spent the next night at another friend’s residence, where the junta rearrested her the following day. Propagandists on a pro-junta Telegram channel posted unsubstantiated claims that Poe Piti Khaing had attended and taken photos at a protest in Mandalay’s Zay Cho Taw Market in the early hours of December 3. The claims posted on Telegram were fabricated, according to a former political prisoner in Mandalay familiar with the events, who denied that Poe Piti Khaing had any involvement in the protest. “She had no connection to it whatsoever. How could someone who was in Myingyan on the night of her release participate in an early morning protest the next day in Mandalay? She didn’t arrive in Mandalay until the evening of December 3, after the protest had ended. They simply re-arrested her without cause and spread false information,” the former political prisoner said. Sources close to Poe Piti Khaing confirmed that she is currently being held for interrogation. They said junta authorities have accused her of violating section 52a of the Counterterrorism Law, a claim Myanmar Now has yet to verify independently. Having served all but the last few months of her sentence, Poe Piti Khaing was one of 30 political prisoners freed from Myingyan Prison on the same day, six of whom were women. Her case is not the first incident where the junta has rearrested prisoners soon after releasing them, in some cases taking them back into custody within minutes. The junta’s amnesties commonly free political prisoners already nearing the ends of their sentences.

Myanmar junta frees, rearrests student organiser within two days

Posts on pro-junta propaganda Telegram channels claimed Poe Piti Khaing, a secretary of the Hpa-An Sudent Union, had photographed an anti-regime protest in Mandalay after her recent release

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