Myanmar’s junta has jailed a Japanese filmmaker for ten years for encouraging dissent against the military and violating an electronic communications law; a diplomatic source told. The military has clamped down on press freedoms since its coup last year, arresting reporters and photographers as well as revoking broadcasting licenses as the country plunged into chaos. So, the article is about Myanmar Jailed Japanese Filmmaker For 10 Years.
The court sentenced Toru Kubota in Yangon’s Insein prison, a diplomat at Japan’s embassy in Myanmar said, adding that the filmmaker’s trial for allegedly violating immigration law was “still continuing.” Mr. Kubota, 26, was detained near an anti-government rally in Yangon in July along with two Myanmar citizens.
The source said that the court sentenced Kubota to “seven years imprisonment” for breaching an electronic communications law and three years for encouraging dissent. The dissent charge carries a maximum three-year jail term and has been widely used in the crackdown on opposition to the coup. The source added that the next hearing for the immigration charge would take place.
A junta spokesman did not respond to requests for comment. Kubota had arrived in Myanmar in July and was filming a “documentary featuring a Myanmar person,” his friend Yoshitaka Nitta told a press conference in Tokyo in August. According to a profile on the FilmFreeway website, Kubota has previously made documentaries on Myanmar’s Muslim Rohingya minority and “refugees and ethnic issues in Myanmar.”
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