The Emergency Provisions Act gave authorities broad powersto hold people without charge and allowed courts to convict onscanty evidence.Military members of parliament, who fill 25 percent of seatsunder Myanmar’s military-drafted constitution, had opposedrepealing it on the grounds it was vital to national security.The law was introduced in 1950 as newly independent Myanmarstruggled with nascent ethnic insurgencies but was thenfrequently used against activists after the military seizedpower in a 1962 coup.Aung San Suu Kyi ’s National League for Democracy, which assumed power this year after a landslide election, has releasedpolitical prisoners and prioritised doing away with oppressivelegislation left over from decades of authoritarian rule.The majority party’s lawmakers, among them many veteranactivists who served time in prison, have already pushed throughthe repeal of a 1975 law on "subversive elements".Tun Tun Hein, chairman of the parliament’s bill committee,told Reuters the approval of the union parliament - members ofboth houses sitting together - meant the repeal will become lawwithin two weeks. "This law was used by the socialist dictatorship to arrestanyone who went against them," he said. "Now we have abolished it because we have a people’sgovernment," he said.One of the more notorious parts of the law set out sentencesof up to seven years jail for "disrupt(ing) the morality or thebehaviour of a group of people or the general public".Thein Than Oo, a lawyer and former political prisoner, saidhe had been imprisoned twice under the "harsh and unjust" law. "In fact, this kind of law shouldn’t exist in a civilizedsociety anywhere," he said.

Source: The Nation Bangkok October 05, 2016 04:18 UTC