Min Htin Ko Ko Gyi
Min Htin Ko Ko Gyi | |
|---|---|
| မင်းထင်ကိုကိုကြီး | |
 | |
| Born | c. 1961 Burma |
| Died | 2 June 2026 |
| Occupations |
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| Children | 1 |
Min Htin Ko Ko Gyi (Burmese: မင်းထင်ကိုကိုကြီး; c. 1961 – 2 June 2026) was a Burmese documentary filmmaker, poet, film educator and political prisoner.[1] He was known for his work in documentary film and human-rights cinema, and for founding the Human Dignity Film Institute and helping organise the Human Rights Human Dignity International Film Festival.[2][3]
Career
Min Htin Ko Ko Gyi directed eight feature-length films and two documentaries.[2] His works included Human Zoo, Beyond the Dream, The Last Poem, and Floating Tomatoes. His 2010 film Floating Tomatoes won best documentary at the 2010 Documentary Film Association of Southeast Asian States.[2]
In 2013, he founded the Human Dignity Film Institute, which trained young filmmakers in Myanmar.[2] From 2013 to 2017, he organised the Human Rights Human Dignity International Film Festival, a film festival in Myanmar focused on human rights and social issues.[4]
Imprisonment
2019 prosecution
In March 2019, Lieutenant Colonel Lin Tun of the Yangon Region Military Command filed a complaint against him under Article 66(d) of the Telecommunications Law over ten Facebook posts written between February and March 2019. The posts criticised the military's role in parliament and its opposition to constitutional amendment efforts.[5][6] He was later charged under Section 505(a) of Myanmar's Penal Code.[7] On 29 August 2019, the Insein Township Court sentenced him to one year of imprisonment with labour under Section 505(a).[8][9] International and domestic rights groups criticised the prosecution as a restriction on freedom of expression.[10]
He was released from Insein Prison on 21 February 2020 after completing his sentence.[11][10] After his release, he called for reform of Myanmar's prison law and said that political prisoners were not given separate official status in prison.[11]
2021 re-arrest
On 1 February 2021, following the 2021 Myanmar coup d'état, Min Htin Ko Ko Gyi was re-arrested. He was among several veteran political prisoners and activists detained in the immediate aftermath of the coup, including Maung Tha Cho, Than Myint Aung, and Mya Aye.[2] Mizzima reported that he was later sentenced to two years under Section 505(b) and was released in November 2022.[3]
Personal life and death
Min Htin Ko Ko Gyi had one daughter, Me Min Htin.[11] He died from liver cancer on 2 June 2026.[3][12]
References
- ↑ "Min Htin Ko Ko Gyi Profile". Assistance Association for Political Prisoners. 2020-01-22. Retrieved 2023-03-01.
- 1 2 3 4 5 "Min Htin Ko Ko Gyi". Artists at Risk Connection. 2019. Retrieved 2023-03-01.
- 1 2 3 "ဒါရိုက်တာ မင်းထင်ကိုကိုကြီး၏ ဈာပန အခမ်းအနား ပြုလုပ်ပြီးစီး". Mizzima (in Burmese). 2026-06-02. Retrieved 2026-06-03.
- ↑ Dunant, Ben (2019-06-26). "Min Htin Ko Ko Gyi and the jealous nation". Frontier Myanmar. Retrieved 2023-03-01.
- ↑ Win Nandar (2019-04-02). "မင်းထင်ကိုကိုကြီး၏ အရေးအသား ၁၀ ခု တပ်ကို အသရေဖျက်ဟု တိုင်ကြားချက်တွင် ပါရှိ". Myanmar Now (in Burmese). Retrieved 2026-06-03.
- ↑ "Myanmar filmmaker charged over Facebook posts about military". Reuters. 2019-07-18. Retrieved 2023-03-01.
- ↑ Khin Moh Moh Lwin (2019-07-18). "တပ်မတော်က တရားစွဲဆိုထားသော ဒါရိုက်တာ မင်းထင်ကိုကိုကြီးကို ပုဒ်မ ၅၀၅ (က) ဖြင့် စွဲချက်တင်". Myanmar Now (in Burmese). Retrieved 2026-06-03.
- ↑ Khin Moh Moh Lwin (2019-08-29). "ဒါရိုက်တာ မင်းထင်ကိုကိုကြီး၏ ရေးသားချက်များတွင် တပ်မတော်အပေါ် ကောင်းစေလိုသော စေတနာ မတွေ့ရဟု တရားသူကြီးသုံးသပ်". Myanmar Now (in Burmese). Retrieved 2026-06-03.
- ↑ "Myanmar: Yangon court convicts prominent filmmaker Min Htin Ko Ko Gyi". ARTICLE 19. Retrieved 2023-03-01.
- 1 2 Aung Theinkha (2020-02-21). "ဒါရိုက်တာ မင်းထင်ကိုကိုကြီး ပြန်လည်လွတ်မြောက်". Radio Free Asia (in Burmese). Retrieved 2026-06-03.
- 1 2 3 Khin Moh Moh Lwin (2020-02-21). "အကျဉ်းထောင်ဥပဒေပြင်ရန် လူ့အခွင့်အရေးဒါရိုက်တာ ထောင်မှလွတ်လွတ်ချင်းတောင်းဆို". Myanmar Now (in Burmese). Retrieved 2026-06-03.
- ↑ "နိုင်ကျဉ်းဟောင်း ဒါရိုက်တာ မင်းထင်ကိုကိုကြီး ကွယ်လွန်". BBC News မြန်မာ (in Burmese). 2026-06-02. Retrieved 2026-06-03.