Via Op-Ed News:

“More than 20 activists were sentenced in Burma on Thursday. A popular Burmese Hip-Hop singer Zay Yar Thaw was also included in the list of the detainees sentenced… Zay Yar Thaw organised and led the Generation Wave group with the young activists during the Saffron Revolution led by the Buddhist monks in 2007. He was arrested in March with his four other members of Generation Wave. He was sentenced today to 6 years imprisonment for possessing foreign currency and organising an illegal group. The four other members of Generation Wave were sentenced to 5 years imprisonment each. 14 members of NLD were given 2 1/2 years. The leader and spokesmonk for the Saffron Revolution Ashin Gambira gets another 15 years.”

Haven’t heard Zay Yar Thaw’s music, but you gotta admire people like him. If hip-hop was “The Black CNN,” as the mighty Chuck D of Public Enemy famously asserted, then Burmese hip-hop activists, too, stand to make a dent.

Details of the sentencing of bandmate Yan Yan Chan are pending. It looks like the site of Ashin Mettacara, a “Buddhist monk from Burma who is blogging with the aim of spreading news to the whole world about the crisis in Burma,” will be one to watch.