To any sensible person, the arrest and detention of 15 pro-election protest leaders and the subsequent legal proceedings against them are not just abusive and outrageous, but also unconstitutional.
Their alleged offences are nowhere near what one would call committing a crime. They only led small groups of people to stage a demonstration calling for the military government to return to its previous democracy roadmap by holding a general election by this November. They also called on the regime to step down before the poll and for the military to stop supporting the National Council for Peace and Order (NCPO), which toppled an elected government in the 2014 coup four years ago.
But when they decided to end the protest to avoid violent clashes, the police locked them up. They have been in jail since Tuesday afternoon.
