Aubuchon honoree Sithu Aung Myint released from Myanmar prison

Sithu Aung Myint, a commentator for Voice of America (VOA) and one of the National Press Club’s John Aubuchon Press Freedom Award winners this year, was released from prison in Myanmar on Nov. 30.

Myint had been sentenced to three years on charges of “incitement” and “defamation” after criticizing the military junta. He was one of 3,000 political prisoners granted amnesty by the regime.

Myint was imprisoned in 2021, and there had seemed to be little movement in his case before he obtained amnesty earlier this week. He is one of nine journalists affiliated with the U.S. Agency for Global Media (USAGM) who received an Aubuchon Award. The other journalists remain imprisoned abroad following the agency’s dismantling earlier this year.

The Club’s Board of Directors agreed the honor is meant both to recognize the journalists’ courage to practice journalism in parts of the world often dangerous for journalists and to call attention to what it describes as a failure by the United States government to defend reporters jailed for work that advanced U.S. ideals of free expression. 

The Aubuchon honorees work for VOA, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty and Radio Free Asia. The Aubuchons will be awarded at the Fourth Estate Gala on Dec. 9. 

Sithu was not the first journalist released by Myranmar following announcement of his status as an Aubuchon honoree. The Club named journalist Danny Fenster as an Aubuchon winner in 2021, and shortly thereafter Fenster was also released from prison.