An Australian journalist who was a pioneering publisher in Southeast Asia was sentenced Wednesday to 13 years in a Myanmar prison for drug possession.
Ross Dunkley was arrested when police raided his home in Yangon in June last year. His British business partner, John McKenzie, was also arrested and received the same sentence, while five Myanmar women caught in the raid were each given 11-year sentences. Police said they found methamphetamine tablets and crystal methamphetamine, and small quantities of marijuana, heroin and opium in Dunkley's home.
Dunkley co-founded or acquired English-language publications in formerly socialist states that were seeking foreign investment as they liberalized their economies, but was sometimes criticized for doing business with authoritarian regimes. He was involved in startup projects in Vietnam in 1991 and Myanmar in 2000, and later acquired Cambodia's Phnom Penh Post. He is no longer linked with any of them.
In 2011, Dunkley served a one-month sentence for assaulting a Myanmar woman he met at a nightclub in Yangon.
WARSAW, Poland (AP) — A former Polish justice minister who faces prosecution in his homeland over alleged abuse of power said Monday that he has been granted asylum in Hungary.
Zbigniew Ziobro was a key figure in the government led by the nationalist conservative Law and Justice party that ran Poland between 2015 and 2023. That administration established political control over key judicial institutions by stacking higher courts with friendly judges and punishing its critics with disciplinary action or assignments to far-away locations.
Current Prime Minister Donald Tusk’s government came to power more than two years ago with ambitions to roll back the changes, but efforts to undo them have been blocked by two successive presidents aligned with the national right.
In October, prosecutors requested the lifting of Ziobro's parliamentary immunity to press charges against him. They allege among other things that Ziobro misused a fund for victims of violence, including for the purchase of Israeli Pegasus surveillance software.
Tusk’s party says Law and Justice used Pegasus to spy illegally on political opponents while in power. Ziobro says he acted lawfully.
Hungary, led by nationalist Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, has hosted several politicians close to Law and Justice while Polish authorities were seeking them.
In a lengthy post on X Monday, Ziobro wrote that he had “decided to accept the asylum granted to me by the government of Hungary due to the political persecution in Poland.”
“I have decided to remain abroad until genuine guarantees of the rule of law are restored in Poland,” he said. “I believe that instead of acquiescing to being silenced and subjected to a torrent of lies — which I would have no opportunity to refute — I can do more by fighting the mounting lawlessness in Poland.”
Hungarian Foreign Minister Péter Szijjártó said in Budapest on Monday that Hungarian authorities have granted asylum to “several” individuals who would face political persecution in Poland, according to his ministry. He declined to specify their names.
In an English-language post on X, Tusk wrote that “the former Minister of Justice(!), Mr. Ziobro, who was the mastermind of the political corruption system, has asked the government of Victor Orbán for political asylum.”
“A logical choice,” he added.
FILE - The leader of the Polish junior coalition partners Zbigniew Ziobro, speaks to reporters alongside in Warsaw, Poland, Saturday, Sept. 26, 2020. (AP Photo/Czarek Sokolowski, file)
