A court in military-ruled Myanmar on Friday jailed American journalist Danny Fenster for 11 years, his lawyer and his employer said, despite U.S. calls for his release from what it said was unjust detention.
Fenster, 37, the managing editor of online magazine Frontier Myanmar, was found guilty of incitement and violations of immigration and unlawful associations laws, his magazine said, describing the sentences as "the harshest possible under the law".
He is the first Western journalist sentenced to prison in recent years in Myanmar, where a Feb. 1 coup by the military against an elected government led by Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi ended a decade of tentative steps towards democracy and triggered nationwide protests.
"There is absolutely no basis to convict Danny of these charges," said Thomas Kean, editor-in-chief of Frontier Myanmar, one of the country's top independent news outlets.
"Everyone at Frontier is disappointed and frustrated at this decision. We just want to see Danny released as soon as possible so he can go home to his family."
Fenster was arrested while trying to leave the country in May and has since been held in Yangon's notorious Insein prison, where hundreds of opponents of the Tatmadaw, as the military is known, were jailed, many beaten and tortured, during decades of dictatorship.
He was charged with additional, and more serious, offences of sedition and violations of the terrorism act earlier this week, without an explanation by authorities. Those charges are punishable by a maximum 20 years in prison each.
Phil Robertson, deputy Asia director of Human Rights Watch, said Fenster's jailing was also intended as warnings to the United States and the media.
"The junta's rationale for this outrageous, rights abusing sentence is first to shock and intimidate all remaining Burmese journalists inside Myanmar by punishing a foreign journalist this way," he said.
"The second message is more strategic, focused on sending a message to the U.S. that the Tatmadaw's generals don't appreciate being hit with economic sanctions and can bite back with hostage diplomacy," he said.
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