Former teacher Ko Min Min, who was arrested in Bago on July 10 for conducting a human rights workshop, was sentenced to three years in prison and fined 30,000 kyat by a Prome court yesterday. 

 

Sources close to Ko Min Min told DVB that more than 100 of his former students and rights activists attended his sentence hearing yesterday to offer him moral support. One man who was present during the sentencing said that Ko Min Min had officially been jailed for teaching without a license. 

 

“This is completely unfair. A lot of people burst into tears at the court after they heard his sentence,” the former student of Ko Min Min said on condition of anonymity. 

 

Since the start of this year, Ko Min Min had stopped giving private tuition to high school students and had started holding rights awareness workshops. U Myint Aye, a member of the Human Rights Defenders and Promoters activist group told DVB that it was widely assumed that Ko Min Min had been detained because the government considered him a risk. 

 

“He hadn’t been teaching as a private tutor for some time . . . the real reason they punished him was because of his human rights activites,” U Myint Aye said.