WSOC Charlotte reports that vandalism at a Buddhist temple in nearby Charlotte, NC, is being investigated as a hate crime. You can read or watch the report online here. Police say this is not the first time the center been targeted. Anyone with any information should contact Crimestoppers at 704-334-1600.
Min Zin, a Burmese journalist in exile who is a teaching fellow at the University of California, Berkeley, School of Journalism, writes for the Wall Street Journal today about his brother imprisoned in Burma for being in possession of a U.N. report about last year’s “Saffron Revolution.” He writes:
[...]
The reality is that my brother did get a lighter sentence — the maximum under the law which he was charged with violating. Nowadays, high-profile dissidents usually receive prison sentences from 20 to 70 years. Since November, the special courts held inside the Insein prison compound have rushed to complete the hearings against Burmese democracy activists, Buddhist monks, student leaders, ethnic minority youth, labor activists, journalists, poets, bloggers, and even comedians and musicians who were arrested during and after last year’s peaceful protests.
These hearings and sentencing continue in the absence of their attorneys. Worse yet, three defense lawyers were imprisoned for between four and six months for contempt of court after transmitting their clients’ complaints of an unfair trial. (Another defense lawyer convicted of contempt of court fled to the Thai border to evade arrest.) Four other defense lawyers were barred from representing their clients.
The military is immediately transferring those who receive sentences to prisons in remote areas. Earlier this month, my brother was sent to a prison in Kalay, 680 miles from his home in Rangoon in Burma’s northwestern frontier — far from all those who care about him.
The goal of such harsh punishments is clear: to eliminate potential opposition in the run-up to the 2010 election, which is the last step in the junta’s “Seven-Point Roadmap to Democracy.”
The junta is mocking the U.N. Security Council, which issued a statement in October 2007 calling for the release of all political prisoners, including Nobel Prize winner Aung San Suu Kyi, who remains under house arrest. In response, 112 former presidents and prime ministers from more than 50 countries signed a letter this month urging U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon to return to Burma for the first time since his visit after Cyclone Nargis and press for the release of political prisoners.
Via Dosho Mike Port at Wild Fox Zen:
