Burma: Detained human rights defender Mr Kyaw Hla Aung to appear in court
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| U Kyaw Hla Aung (Photo: IRIN) |
July 26, 2013
On 31 July 2013, human rights defender and community leader Mr Kyaw Hla Aung will appear at the district court in Sittwe to hear charges against him.
Kyaw Hla Aung works to promote and defend the rights of minority Rohingyas in Arakan state. The human rights defender is a respected community leader having served as a Sittwe district civil court clerk and a former staff member of Médecins Sans Frontiers.
On 15 July, Kyaw Hla Aung was arrested by police at his home in Thet Kae Pyin in Sittwe and has since then been arbitrarily detained without charge at Police Station 1 in Sittwe. The human rights defender is currently being held for questioning and does not have access to his family members or his lawyer.
The arrest was reportedly related to a “population verification exercise”, conducted on 26 April, in which the local government of Arakan state began to assess the population of Muslim internally displaced persons (IDPs) and others currently living in Sittwe to provide more accurate population data for short and long term development plans.
It was reported that for the verification exercise the Rohingya population would have to be recorded as Bengali which angered many members in the community. During a protest by the Rohingya community, one police officer abused a member of the Rohingya community and was subsequently beaten up by a crowd.
When the police officer fled to a house to escape, a crowd gathered outside and allegedly planned to burn it down. When Kyaw Hla Aung heard about this he phoned, from his home, the community leaders in the IDP camps to request that they prevent violence.
It is believed that this incident on 26 April 2013 has been used as a pretext to falsely accuse Kyaw Hla Aung of supporting a movement aiming to create a Rohingya state.
From April until June 2013, Kywa Hla Aung was forced to go into hiding since police officials were roaming around the area where he was living. The human rights defender is known to be a strong advocate for the rights of the minority Rohingya population and had regularly meet with members of the diplomatic corps and international NGOs to brief them about the human rights situation facing the Rohingya population.
Front Line Defenders believes that the arrest and detention of Kyaw Hla Aung is directly related to his work in the defence of human rights, in particularly in support of Rohingya's rights. Front Line Defenders is concerned with the continuing harassment against the human rights defender, including a previous incidence of arbitrary arrest lasting from 11 June until 16 August 2012.
