Reporters Without Borders and the Burmese Media Association issued a joint statement denouncing the sentences.

“The authorities have imposed an extraordinarily severe punishment on Nay Phone Latt just for using the Internet,” the two organisations said. “This shocking sentence is meant to terrify those who go online in an attempt to elude the dictatorship’s ubiquitous control of news and information, and we call for his immediate release. Saw Wai, for his part, is being made to pay for his impertinence and courage as a committed poet.”

The two organisations added: “There is an urgent need now for bloggers all over the world to demonstrate their solidarity with Nay Phone Latt by posing his photo on their blogs and by writing to Burmese embassies worldwide to request his release. Similarly, we call on poets to defend their fellow-poet, Saw Wai, who has been jailed just because of one poem.”

Nay Phone Latt, proprietor of two internet cafes in Rangoon, was arrested last January for posting at his blog a comedy video poking fun at the military government.

The lawyer representing Nay Phone Lat has begun serving a four-month contempt sentence for criticising the special court’s procedures and so was not in court for his client’s sentencing.

Contact information for the Embassy of Myanmar/Burma in Canada:

Embassy of Myanmar
Sandringham Building
85 Range Road, Suite 902-903
Ottawa, Ontario K1N 8J6
Tel: (613) 232-6434
Fax: (613) 232-6435
E-mail: mofa.aung@mptmail.net.mm

Here’s some more news Burmese authorities would rather we didn’t hear: Fighting and the demands of capricious army officers have forced over 500,000 people from eastern Burma into refugee camps just inside the border with Thailand.