CSW calls for immediate release of former UK ambassador and her husband

CSW has called for the immediate and unconditional release of the UK’s former ambassador to Myanmar/Burma Vicky Bowman and her husband Htein Lin after the couple was arrested on 24 August.

Ms Bowman has been accused of breaking visa rules, and Mr Lin has been accused of helping her. The couple could face up to five years in jail and are currently being held in Insein prison in Yangon ahead of a trial scheduled for 6 September.

Ms Bowman served as the UK ambassador to Myanmar from 2002 to 2006, and now runs the Myanmar Centre for Responsible Business. Her husband is a Burmese artist and former political prisoner. Their arrests follow more than 18 months of an extensive crackdown on activists, political leaders and other dissidents in the aftermath of the military coup of February 2021.

On 25 July 2022 the Myanmar army announced that it had executed four democracy activists who were accused of helping to carry out “terror acts” in the country’s first judicial executions since 1990.

CSW’s Senior Analyst for East Asia Benedict Rogers said: “CSW calls for the immediate and unconditional release of Vicky Bowman and Htein Lin, both of whom have clearly been targeted as part of the Myanmar army’s pervasive ongoing crackdown on anyone it perceives as a threat or a critic of the regime. The fact that they can treat a former ambassador in this manner is no doubt an indicator of their egregious treatment of lesser-known activists and ordinary citizens of Myanmar. The international community must not turn a blind eye to this; the need for extensive and co-ordinated sanctions remains clear, as is the need for a sweeping global arms embargo against the Myanmar military and its enterprises.”