Former Myanmar colonel who once served as information minister gets 10-year prison term for sedition

Ye Htut is the latest to be convicted of sedition and incitement for Facebook posts. Ex-Myanmar Army officer Ye Htut convicted of sedition and incitement, sentenced to 10 years in prison. He was accused of making posts on Facebook critical of the military rulers, and was charged with sedition and incitement, punishable by up to 7 and 3 years respectively. 4,204 civilians have died in the military gov't crackdown, 25,474 arrested.

A former high-profile Myanmar Army officer who had served as information minister and presidential spokesperson in a previous military-backed government has been convicted of sedition and incitement, a legal official said on Thursday. He was sentenced to 10 years in prison.

Ye Htut, a 64-year-old retired Lieutenant-Colonel, is the latest in a series of people arrested and jailed for writing Facebook posts that allegedly spreading false or inflammatory news. Once infrequently prosecuted, there has been a deluge of such legal actions since the army seized power from the elected government of Aung San Suu Kyi in February 2021.

He was arrested in late October after a military officer from the Yangon Regional Military Command reportedly filed a change against him, around the time when some senior military officers were purged on other charges, including corruption. He was convicted on Wednesday, according to the official familiar with the legal proceedings who insisted on anonymity for fear of being punished by the authorities.

Ye Htut had been the spokesperson from 2013 to 2016 for President Thein Sein in a military-backed government and also Information Minister from 2014 to 2016.

After leaving the government in 2016, Ye Htut took on the role of a political commentator and wrote books and posted articles on Facebook. For a time, he was a visiting senior research fellow at the ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute, a center for Southeast Asia studies in Singapore.

After the army’s 2021 takeover, he often posted short personal vignettes and travel essays on Facebook in which he made allusions that were generally recognized to be critical of Myanmar’s current military rulers.

The Army’s takeover triggered mass public protests that the military and police responded to with lethal force, triggering armed resistance and violence that has escalated into a civil war.