JURIST EXCLUSIVE — These are excerpts from the past full filing from our law student correspondents from Myanmar reporting to JURIST until Myanmar went to Internet blackout on Sunday:
So many things can happen tonight.
At night around 9 am, they send the offenders who are simply released [by the military on Friday] into civilian cities to set fire or to cause chaos. Some prisoners are underage. The army made those children take drugs and forced them to create chaos. A police car is captured by civilians last night while they were falling off prisoners. There were knives and also”medications” were discovered on the police’s body. The military is attempting to create a spectacle that people might harm the offenders but all of us choose to react with kindness. In some townships (especially in Yangon), the offenders can hardly talk or answer questions since they are not in the right mind (some of them won’t actually know more about the military coup however ). We will attempt to help them get their loved ones soon and offer them shelter till they can go home. Not all prisoners are poor people, they have their reason for going to jail and they should not be treated unfairly, ESPECIALLY the army shouldn’t EXPLOIT those children.
Urgent change to penal code — definition of High Treason changed in favour of the military:
They literally prevent us from doing anything that we’re doing to protest:
Section 121 — we can’t call for help from other countries to deliver help (like UK and US)
Section 124 (a) — we can’t write any offensive things against the military (like calling them military juntas, crossing out Min Aung Hlaing’s face with red ink)
Section 124 (c) — we can not bang pots and hint at each other if they come to arrest us at nighttime
Section 124 (d) — Calling out to CDM staffs and CDM fans
The so-called amendments are made in the penal code only with the touch of Min Aung Hlaing at the end of that paper. No consultation with the legislative body. Min Aung Hlaing is sitting above the law today as he is manipulating all Legislative, executive, and judicial power only in his hands.
So, when INJUSTICE becomes LAW,
RESISTANCE becomes our DUTY. We haven’t heard from some of our regular law student correspondents for more than five hours. If the blackout is finished at 9 AM Myanmar time tonight (9:30 PM EST), as anticipated, we may hear from at least one of them afterward, and we hope we all do. For a variety of reasons, nevertheless, we still may not. We wait.
