17 January 2018•Update: 18 January 2018
ISTANBUL
TRT World Producer Mok Choy Lin and Aung Naing Soe, a Myanmar journalist and interpreter, arrived in Istanbul on Wednesday after their release in Myanmar following a two-month prison term.
Lin and Soe -- along with Singaporean national cameraman Lau Hon Meng and a freelance journalist and their driver Hla Tin -- were detained by the authorities in Myanmar on Oct. 27 for flying an unlicensed drone to film Myanmar’s parliament building without permission.
The crew were jailed on Nov. 10 and released on Dec. 29 by a Myanmar court.
On their arrival at the airport, Lin told reporters that they had a hard time during the first two weeks in the jail as they were confined to a small cell without any contact with the outside world.
"After being arrested, we asked the police if we could contact the Embassy and hire lawyers, but nobody cared," she complained. She added that the case was heard in the local language so she could not understand anything during the trials.
She said she was happy to be in Turkey.
Her translator Soe said he was identified as a terrorist although all he did was to help as an interpreter. “I am a Muslim. So this also played negatively in my case. We do not know exactly for what reason we were detained. There is no consistency here,” he said.
In a statement at the time of the arrests, TRT World said Myanmar's Information Ministry had been informed beforehand about the crew’s filming plans. The two TRT staffers arrived in the commercial capital Yangon on Oct. 21 on journalist visas, TRT added, and used the drone at various locations before their arrest.
Reporting by Izzet Taskiran:Writing by Ahmet Sait Akcay
