88 Gen calls on Thai PM for justice over ‘death row’ Myanmar migrant workers

26 December 2015
88 Gen calls on Thai PM for justice over ‘death row’ Myanmar migrant workers
A protester stands outside the Thai embassy in Yangon. Photo: Thet Ko/Mizzima

A Myanmar NGO has written a letter to Thailand's prime minister to call for justice and a review of the case of two Myanmar migrant workers who have been sentenced to death for the murder of two British tourists on Koh Tao island.
Min Ko Naing, writing on behalf of the 88 Generation Peace and Open Society, has called on Thai Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-ocha to review the case and the verdict. 
The letter was sent on Dec. 24 as protesters gathered outside Thailand's embassy.
For a second day, hundreds of protesters gathered at the embassy on Friday to demonstrate after the two Myanmar migrants were sentenced to death by a Thai court for murdering the two British backpackers, in a verdict that has sparked anger in Myanmar.
Zaw Lin and Win Zaw Tun were found guilty on Thursday of killing David Miller, 24, and the rape and murder of Hannah Witheridge, 23, whose battered bodies were found on a beach on the southern Thai diving resort of Koh Tao in September last year.
The grim killings have sullied Thailand's reputation as a tourist haven and raised questions over its justice system after the defence accused the police of bungling their investigation and using the men as scapegoats -- a charge authorities deny.
Hundreds of people, including monks, gathered in Yangon to protest at the verdict, many saying they believed the two men had been wrongly convicted.
"This is just discrimination against us," demonstrator Min Thein Khaing said. 
"There was little evidence, no witnesses and not much DNA evidence but still they got a death sentence. It's unfair."
Many held signs with English slogans such as "Save Myanmar Poor Boys" and "Free Our Innocent Citizens". Others held aloft pictures of Thailand's King Bhumibol Adulyadej, saying they were appealing to him for clemency.
A police cordon stopped protesters demonstrating opposite the embassy itself, confining them to the end of the street instead.
The rally came as Myanmar's envoy in Thailand met with senior government officials.
"After hearing the verdict, as a human being I felt regret but it's a judicial matter that still has to proceed," ambassador Win Maung told reporters through a translator.
"I hope this case will receive special care and won't affect bilateral ties."
Other Myanmar officials have said they intend to support the two men's appeals.
"The judicial process is not over yet, we have much to do such as discussing with respective persons from Thailand and appealing to the High Court," Hmuu Zaw, manager of the President's Office, posted on Facebook.
Thailand has warned its citizens to take care in Myanmar following the verdict.
Thai prosecutors and police insist their evidence against the men was rock solid, including DNA found on Witheridge's body.
But the defence, which has vowed to appeal the verdict, disputed the forensic evidence, saying it was improperly collected and processed.
They also accused the police of torturing their clients into signing confessions, which they later retracted.
Amnesty International has called on Thai authorities to fully investigate the torture allegations, something the rights group said had yet to happen.
Activists say the case reflects a wider trend of low-paid migrant workers from neighbouring countries being blamed for crimes in Thailand where the justice system is easily bent by wealth and power.
Hundreds of thousands of low-paid migrants from Myanmar, Cambodia and Laos prop up key industries in Thailand such as the tourism and fishing sectors, often experiencing well documented abuse and discrimination.
However the Thai authorities have received an endorsement from Miller's family who backed investigators after the verdict was announced, saying they believed the evidence against the two accused was "overwhelming".
The court in Koh Samui also dismissed the defence's torture allegations.
A statement from Witheridge's family that was released after the verdict did not mention whether they thought the convictions were safe.

#လိပ္ကြ်န္းလူသတ္မႈ ႏွင့္ ပတ္သက္၍ #ထုိင္းတရား႐ံုး၏ ဆံုးျဖတ္ခ်က္အေပၚ မေက်နပ္မႈေၾကာင့္ ရန္ကုန္ၿမိဳ႕ #ထုိင္းသံ႐ံုးအနီး ဆႏၵျပေနသူမ်ားထံ ထုိင္းသံ႐ံုး တာဝန္ရွိသူက လာေရာက္ေျဖရွင္းစဥ္။ (႐ိုက္ကူး- သက္ကို) ဆႏၵျပသူမ်ား ၏ ေတာင္းဆုိခ်က္မ်ား ႏွင့္ ေပးစာကို ထုိင္းအစိုးရထံ ျပန္လည္ တင္ျပေပးမည္ျဖစ္ၿပီး အတတ္ႏုိင္ဆံုး ေျဖရွင္းေပးမည္ဟု ၎က ေျပာၾကားခဲ့သည္။
Posted by Mizzima - News in Burmese on Friday, December 25, 2015

Additional reporting from AFP