Word: zawacki
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Dates: during 2010-2019
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...freeing of 82-year-old Tin Oo, vice chairman of the National League for Democracy, from seven years of prison and then house arrest "does not in any way signal a shift in attitude on the part of the government," said Benjamin Zawacki, a Thailand-based researcher with Amnesty International. "Like all prisoners of conscience in Myanmar [Burma], he never should have been arrested in the first place...
...Zawacki pointed out that more than 2,100 political prisoners remain incarcerated in Burma. Three days before Tin Oo's release the regime sentenced Burmese-born American citizen and political activist Kyaw Zaw Lwin to three years imprisonment at a time it is supposedly seeking better ties with the U.S., and on Tuesday, a Burmese court sentenced four women who held prayer services for Suu Kyi's release to prison terms with hard labor. "One step forward, one step back is the opposite of a shift," Zawacki said. A report released Tuesday by Amnesty International concurs, documenting stepped-up repression...
...Zawacki cautioned, however, that Tin Oo's release could be a ploy on the part of the government. "His release may have been a kind of false incentive to the NLD. NLD participation in an election that it loses would greatly assist the government's inevitable claims that the election was legitimate," he said...