By Ed Cropley
March 14, 2008 - YANGON: Not many people know that the law in military-ruled Myanmar enshrines the individual’s right to criticise the government.
The only problem is, mention Section 124A of the penal code in your defence in court and you are likely to be arrested, lawyers who have suffered that very fate say.
It is just one of the many absurdities in the former Burma’s court system being taken up by a small but growing number of activist lawyers in the wake of last September’s monk-led pro-democracy protests.
“The monks have played their role, the actors and celebrities have played their role, and now we’re playing ours,” said one of the lawyers in Yangon.
By their own admission, the role of defence attorney is limited in a country that has been under military rule for 46 years and which held 1,100 political prisoners, according to the United Nations, even before last year’s mass arrests.
In another contravention of rights accorded to ordinary criminal suspects, lawyers for political prisoners cannot plead guilt or innocence before the court and cannot challenge any issue of law, the lawyers said.
Judgements are often handed down the same day by civilian magistrates who are “just following orders”, another of the lawyers said, of a junta which appears to have inherited an obsession with rules and regulations from British colonial times.
Lawyers are also denied access to their clients in prison, meaning the only time they can see them is in the courtroom itself during a hearing.
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