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Reporters Without Borders and the Burma Media Association are outraged by the two-year sentence passed today on Ein Khaing Oo, a 24-year-old female journalist employed by the weekly Ecovision Journal, for taking photos of Cyclone Nargis victims. She was arrest in Rangoon last June.

"This unjust sentence comes amid a wave of unprecedented sentences for journalists and activists," the two organisations said. "We appeal to Burma's military authorities to free Ein Khaing Oo, whose only crime was to cover the humanitarian disaster in the Irrawaddy delta."

According to Mizzima, the sentence was handed down today by a Rangoon court at the end of a trial held behind closed doors with no defence lawyer. She was accused of taking photos that could be used by foreign news media. Arrested on 10 June while covering a demonstration by Nargis victims outside a UN building in Rangoon, Ein Khaing Oo has already spent five months in Insein prison.


Another journalist, Zaw Thet Htwe, and a blogger, Zarganar, are also being held for helping Nargis victims. Zarganar was arrested after giving an interview to a BBC television reporter. Verdicts are expected in their cases in the coming days. The toll from Cyclone Nargis' passage across Burma in May was around 130,000 people dead or missing.
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