Solidarity with Burmese Law Students: The Case of Honey Oo

Honey Oo, a 21-year-old law student, was arrested in October 2007 for forming a student union, partaking in the Saffron Revolution protests and for speaking to foreign radio about those protests. She was held for over two months without being charged and was convicted at trial of sedition and violating the illegal associations law. The scant evidence against her failed to address her otherwise solid alibi. Her case is representative of the Burmese government’s contempt for its obligations to both domestic criminal law and international human rights law. A law student like any of us, Honey Oo has been deprived of her personal freedom for exercising her most basic human rights.

Burmese Law and Procedure

Honey Oo was arrested without a warrant for allegedly committing a non- cognizable offence despite the fact that s.54(1) of the Burmese Code of Criminal Procedure (CCP) requires a warrant for arrests of non-cognizable offences. She was held without charge at Rangoon’s notorious Insein Prison from October 9 - December 10, 2007 contradicting s. 167(2) of the CPP which provides for a maximum detention of 30 days without charge.

The sole evidence referred to by the presiding Law Officer regarding Honey Oo was an unsigned police statement that she allegedly made while in custody. This illustrates that Burmese courts are hearing evidence in violation of the Evidence Act ss. 25 and 26, which forbids the court from finding against a victim based on a confession rendered while in custody. Furthermore, numerous witnesses, none of whom were allowed to testify at Honey Oo’s trial, insisted that she was writing a law school exam at the time that the prosecutor’s witnesses claim she was leading a protest. These irregularities are in violation of the Evidence Act’s stipulations at s. 60.

The authorities should have re- leased Honey Oo prior to her trial based on s.169 of the CCP, which stipulates that if there is inadequate evidence to make a case against an accused, he or she should be released from custody. Additionally, the Attorney General’s Rules And Regulations Regulation 51 Chapter 6, requires cases referred to the Law Officer be accompanied by a) First Information Report or Direct Complaint; b) Prosecutor and Defence Side Witness Statements; c) Confessions; and d) Relevant Facts, Documentation, Photos and other such Evidence.

The fact that Honey Oo was tried only on hearsay evidence and a falsified police statement indicates a failure of the prosecutor to satisfy the requirements, stated in the Instructions to the Prosecutor (2001) 1/2001 at Chapter 7, that the officer in charge of a case analyse and guarantee facts as correct and relevant to the law.

Finally, Honey Oo was convicted of both sedition and illegal association, although both charges were framed on the same facts. This is contrary to the Burmese Penal Code, at s. 71 which explicitly forbids the overlapping of offences in a manner that exceeds the maximum sentence for a given offence.