SITTWE, Myanmar - A Myanmar court on Tuesday sentenced a prominent ethnic Rakhine leader to 20 years in jail for treason, a verdict likely to intensify anger amid fighting between the ethnic group and the army.
State-backed media at the time said he railed against the central government for treating the ethnic Rakhine as"slaves" and said it was the"right time" for the community to launch an armed struggle. "Both Dr Aye Maung and writer Wai Hin Aung were sentenced to 20 years each... for the charge of high treason and two years each for defamation of the state," Wai Hin Aung's defence lawyer Aye Nu Sein told AFP.A brutal military crackdown in 2017 forced some 740,000 Rohingya Muslims over the border into Bangladesh.
In recent weeks, the military has waged war on the Arakan Army , an armed group claiming to represent the ethnic Rakhine.