Urgent call for release of Myanmar filmmaker Ma Aeint

 

Ma Aeint

The International Coalition for Filmmakers at Risk (ICFR) has called on Myanmar to immediately and unconditionally release filmmaker Ma Aeint.

Film producer Aeint has been sentenced to three years of jail with hard labour by a court in Yangon, Myanmar.

Aeint is an alumna of FAMU Summer Filmmaking Initiation Campus and Locarno Open Doors Lab as well as Ties That Bind.

She’s a producer and co-writer of Money Has Four Legs directed by Maung Sun which ran in the New Currents competition at the 2020 Busan International Film Festival.

Together, they also co-wrote a script about a filmmaker coming to terms with the realities of making a debut film and facing the censorship authorities.

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She was detained in June last year and after ten months in jail as a political prisoner was found guilty on Friday of breaching Article 505A of Myanmar’s criminal code which penalises “causing fear, spreading fake news or agitating against government employees.”

She pleaded not guilty to the charges and had legal representation at the hearing at a prison court.

“The human rights situation in Myanmar under its military regime has long been regarded as among the worst in the world,” says ICFR board member and European Film Academy chairman Mike Downey. “This harsh sentencing of Ma Aeint is a clear example and representation of the cruelty of the current regime and its desire to clamp down on] he basic rights of freedom of expression. The ICFR will continue to campaign for her release and we deplore this act of cruel sentencing to the full extent of the law.”

Her sentence is the maximum available under the law, three years of jail with hard labour, from which the ten months that she has already been officially detained may be deducted.

ICFR therefore calls on the Myanmar authorities to immediately and unconditionally release Ma Aeint and also encourages all film and culture institutions around the world to do the same.

*Founded by the International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam, International Film Festival Rotterdam and the European Film Academy, the International Coalition for Filmmakers at Risk’s mission is to advocate for and to act in solidarity with filmmakers at risk. The Coalition acts in cases of persecution or threats to the personal safety of these filmmakers and will defend their right to continue their work by mobilising the international film community.