I’m sure you have heard of the case of the young New Zealand man recently sent to jail in Myanmar for insulting religion.
32-year-old New Zealander Philip Blackwood’s sentence includes two years of hard labour for distributing a flier on Facebook,which featured a picture of Buddha wearing headphones.
It was a naïve thing to do in the conservative Buddhist Myanmar, but there’s no evidence Blackwood set out to seriously offend anyone. When complaints were made about the flier, he immediately cancelled the event and apologised profusely.
I have spoken several times to his terribly worried parents in Wellington. They say he is enduring appalling conditions in the notorious Insein Prison in Yangon and that they are worried about his health.
Blackwood is also a husband, and father to a seven-month-old daughter, Sasha.
To my eye, the punishment seems out of proportion to the crime. There are rumours the harshness of the sentence was influenced by a group of harder-line Buddhist groups with increasing influence inside Myanmar.
We know from other cases – like that of Peter Greste, the Al Jazeera journalist jailed in Egypt last year - that political and popular pressure can make a difference to sentencing in other countries, particularly on appeal.
Blackwood has said that he intends to appeal. The New Zealand government should be very busy, then, talking with Myanmar authorities about the harshness of the sentence.
The government in Myanmar is moving towards greater democracy and respect for human rights. It’s unlikely they will want this story to blow up in the international press because it makes them seem overly severe. Myanmar increasingly sees itself as a country that is modernising.
I have written to the Myanmar ambassador to New Zealand, based in Canberra, to lobby for a fairer deal for Phil Blackwoodbecause the more pressure we can bring to bear on this situation, the more Philip’s sentence could be softened on appeal.