YANGON: Two Myanmar media executives were granted bail on Friday in a high-profile defamation case that has become a lightning rod for fears over teetering press freedoms under the new democratic government.
The CEO of Eleven Media Group, Than Htut Aung, was freed after suffering a heart attack in Yangon’s notorious Insein prison, where he had been detained for almost two months.
He and the chief editor of one the group’s papers, Wai Phyo, were jailed in November over a column that accused a government minister of receiving a $100,000 watch from a businessman who later won plum contracts.
The minister, Phyo Min Thein, is a high-profile member of Aung San Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy, which came to power in March after winning elections that ended decades of military rule.
Than Htut Aung looked faint as he waded through a scrum of journalists at the court on Friday, supported by his son.
“The two defendants got bail today because the doctor who checked the CEO’s health problems ... reported to the court,” their lawyer, Kyee Myint, told AFP.
The pair, whose bail requests were rejected three times before Friday, will next appear in court on Jan. 13.
Media freedom has increased since Myanmar ended censorship in 2012, the year after a reformist quasi-civilian government took power from the former junta.
But activists say defamation prosecutions have risen sharply since Suu Kyi’s NLD party took office.
Former political prisoner Maung Saugkha said seven people were sued with defamation under the telecommunications law between 2013-16. Since the NLD took over, 38 cases have been brought.
Myanmar media execs granted bail in defamation trial
Myanmar media execs granted bail in defamation trial
Russian minister visits Cuba as Trump ramps up pressure on Havana
- The Russian embassy in Havana said the minister would “hold a series of bilateral meetings” while in Cuba
HAVANA: Russia’s interior minister began a visit to ally Cuba on Tuesday, a show of solidarity after US President Donald Trump warned that the island’s longtime communist government “is ready to fall.”
Trump this month warned Havana to “make a deal,” the nature of which he did not divulge, or pay a price similar to Venezuela, whose leader Nicolas Maduro was ousted by US forces in a January 3 bombing raid that killed dozens of people.
Venezuela was a key ally of Cuba and a critical supplier of oil and money, which Trump has vowed to cut off.
“We in Russia regard this as an act of unprovoked armed aggression against Venezuela,” Russia’s Interior Minister Vladimir Kolokoltsev told Russian state TV Rossiya-1 of the US actions after landing in Cuba.
“This act cannot be justified in any way and once again proves the need to increase vigilance and consolidate all efforts to counter external factors,” he added.
The Russian embassy in Havana said the minister would “hold a series of bilateral meetings” while in Cuba.
Russia and Cuba, both under Western sanctions, have intensified their relations since 2022, with an isolated Moscow seeking new friends and trading partners since its invasion of Ukraine.
Cuba needs all the help it can get as it grapples with its worst economic crisis in decades and now added pressure from Washington.
Trump has warned that acting President Delcy Rodriguez will pay “a very big price” if she does not toe Washington’s line — specifically on access to Venezuela’s oil and loosening ties with US foes Cuba, Russia, China and Iran.
On Tuesday, Russia’s ambassador to Havana, Victor Koronelli, wrote on X that Kolokoltsev was in Cuba “to strengthen bilateral cooperation and the fight against crime.”
The US chief of mission in Cuba, Mike Hammer, meanwhile, met the head of the US Southern Command in Miami on Tuesday “to discuss the situation in Cuba and the Caribbean,” the embassy said on X.
The command is responsible for American forces operating in Central and South America that have carried out seizures of tankers transporting Venezuelan oil and strikes on alleged drug-trafficking boats.
- Soldiers killed -
Cuba has been a thorn in the side of the United States since the revolution that swept communist Fidel Castro to power in 1959.
Havana and Moscow were close communist allies during the Cold War, but that cooperation was abruptly halted in 1991 with the dissolution of the Soviet bloc.
The deployment of Soviet nuclear missile sites on the island triggered the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962, when Washington and Moscow came close to war.
During his first presidential term, Trump walked back a detente with Cuba launched by his predecessor Barack Obama.
Thirty-two Cuban soldiers, some of them assigned to Maduro’s security detail, were killed in the US strikes that saw the Venezuelan strongman whisked away in cuffs to stand trial in New York.
Kolokoltsev attended a memorial for the fallen men on Tuesday.
