http://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/06/world/asia/myanmar-burma-emergency-provisions-act.html 2016-10-05 11:09:26 Myanmar Repeals 1950 Law Long Used to Silence Dissidents Among other measures, the law had authorized prison terms of up to seven years for reading foreign newspapers or listening to broadcasters like the BBC. === CHIANG MAI, Thailand — President Htin Kyaw signed legislation on Tuesday abolishing the law, the Emergency Provisions Act, which, among other draconian measures, had empowered the government to impose seven-year prison terms merely for reading foreign newspapers or listening to broadcasters like the BBC. Parliament, which is dominated by the National League for Democracy, the party of the Nobel laureate “We have abolished the Emergency Provisions Act because it was the tool used by military regimes to suppress political dissidents,” U Aung Kyi Nyunt, the chairman of a panel in Parliament’s upper house that helped draft the legislation, said Wednesday. “And the law does not fit with the current situation of democratization in the country.” Lawmakers appointed by the military, who under the Constitution hold one-quarter of the legislature’s seats, had called for preserving the law, contending that the country’s security still required it, said Mr. Aung Kyi Nyunt, a member of the National League for Democracy. “But we responded that we still have other laws for maintaining law and order,” he said. The Emergency Provisions Act was introduced in 1950, two years after Burma, as the country was then known, attained independence from Britain. The young country’s leaders said at the time that the law was needed to combat multiple ethnic insurgencies, many of which are still unresolved. U Bo Kyi, who was jailed twice under the act during the 1990s, said its abolition was “a positive move.” But 200 political prisoners are still being held under various other laws, said Mr. Bo Kyi, secretary of the Assistance Association for Political Prisoners, a Myanmar human rights group.