The European Union on Friday condemned the "harassment" of foreign journalists in China after a BBC correspondent left the country in the face of legal threats and pressure from authorities.
John Sudworth said he had quit China for Taiwan -- along with his Irish journalist wife -- after a "full-on propaganda attack" from the authorities due to his reporting on Xinjiang rights abuses and the coronavirus pandemic.
In committing widespread human rights violations against the population, Tatmadaw generals have abdicated their sovereign responsibility to protect the people of Myanmar.
Unarmed, people in Myanmar are facing state-organised violence from a military leader whose on-going persecution of the Rohingya now has Myanmar before the International Court of Justice charged with genocide.
The State Administration Council (SAC) has ordered internet service providers to shut down the country's wireless services, telecommunications company Ooredoo said.
"Only fiber line will be working starting from tomorrow," the company told AFP. "We got instructions from the authorities recently."
Few people in Myanmar have access to such hard-line internet services.
Global think tank, the International Crisis Group (ICG) today released a sobering report on the situation in Myanmar, describing the country as being “on the edge of becoming a failed state”.
Dozens of UN member nations issued a statement Thursday denouncing internet shutdowns and attacks on freedom of expression in Myanmar.
Penned by Lithuania, Greece and France, the statement expressed "deep concern" over the plight of journalists and media workers since the military seized power in a February 1 coup.
We "strongly condemn their harassment, arbitrary arrests and detention, as well as of human rights defenders and other members of civil society," the statement read.
The Committee Representing Pyidaungsu Hluttaw (CRPH) declared the country’s 2008 constitution void and put forward an interim replacement charter late Wednesday in a major political challenge to the ruling junta, Reuters reported.
The moves, while more symbolic than practical, could help woo the country’s armed ethnic militias to ally themselves with the mass protest movement against the military’s seizure of power in February, the report said.
Myanmar's ousted civilian leader Aung San Suu Kyi has been accused of breaking a colonial-era official secrets law, her lawyer said, as Britain ramped up sanctions against the junta and the UN Security Council condemned the deaths of hundreds of civilians.
The newly unveiled charge came amid growing international outrage over the February 1 coup and the military's subsequent clampdown on protesters that has left at least 535 people dead.
UK Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab today announced extra resources to bolster a mechanism to collect, investigate and preserve evidence of serious human rights violations in Myanmar.
The UK announced further measures targeting the Tatmadaw (Myanmar military) today with sanctions against military-linked conglomerate Myanmar Economic Corporation (MEC).
Immediately enforced, the sanctions against MEC are in response to the Tatmadaw’s involvement in serious human rights violations, by making funds available to the military, as well as its association with senior military figures.