HUMAN RIGHTS/MILITARY/MYANMAR/TRUMP AS PRESIDENT: “The Baptist minister from Myanmar had less than 60 seconds in the Oval Office to tell President Trump about the mistreatment and abuse his people suffer. The minister, Hkalam Samson, told the president in July that ethnic groups in his homeland were being ‘oppressed and tortured by the Myanmar military government’ and thanked him for imposing sanctions on four top generals. Now, as if to prove Mr. Samson right, a colonel in the Myanmar Army has gone to court seeking to have the minister prosecuted for his comments about the military during that conversation with Mr. Trump. Mr. Samson, who returned home to the northern Myanmar city of Myitkyina after his White House visit, said he was waiting to see whether a court would accept the colonel’s complaint. The nature of the complaint was unclear, but in similar cases, the military has taken advantage of Myanmar’s sweeping criminal defamation laws. A judge is expected to rule next week whether the case can proceed.”
–Richard C. Paddock and Saw Nang, “After Meeting With Trump, a Myanmar Clergyman Could Be Prosecuted,” The New York Times online, September 3, 2019