The Guardian reports:
Malnourished British prisoner suffering ‘awful’ conditions in Myanmar jail
A British man held in Myanmar’s most notorious jail is wasting away in a tiny cell with no window and an open sewer for a toilet while the British government is ignoring pleas to intervene, his father has told the Guardian.
The family has also been working with the Burma Campaign UK charity which accused foreign office minister Hugo Swire this week of abandoning Blackwood’s case by refusing to call for his release during a recent visit to Yangon.
Mark Farmaner, director of Burma Campaign UK, said: “Hugo Swire seems prepared to let an innocent British citizen and his colleagues rot in a Burmese jail rather than risk upsetting his new friends in the Burmese regime.”
And The Telegraph:
Briton jailed in Burma for ‘insulting’ Buddha image named prisoner of conscience by Amnesty
A British bar manager jailed in a notorious Rangoon prison for insulting Buddhism is to be named as a prisoner of conscience by Amnesty International as his family and human rights activists campaign for his release.
Burma Campaign UK, an activist group, this week described Mr Blackwood as a political prisoner and accused Hugo Swire, the foreign minister for Asia, of abandoning him to “rot” in Insein rather than risk British interests by pressing his plight with Burma.
You can take action to help free Philip Blackwood and all political prisoners in Burma here.
