Additional Name(s): ဆလိုင်းဧလလုံးဝေ
Gender: Male
Current Location: Pyay Prison, Bago region
Perpetrator: Burma
Ethnic Group: Chin
Religion or Belief: Christian – Protestant
Sentence: 10 Years' Imprisonment
Date of Detainment: December/28/2021
Date of Sentencing: October/21/2022
Current Status: Not Released
Religious Leader: Yes
Most Recent Type of Abuse: Imprisonment
Reason for Persecution: Ethnoreligious Identity Religious Figure & Religious Leadership Role
Nature of Charges: Defamation Terrorism
Salai Ayla Lone Wai is imprisoned for his religious leadership role and targeted for his ethnoreligious background.
On December 28, 2021, Burmese military authorities arrested Salai Ayla Lone Wai, an ethnic Chin pastor from Okpho Township, Bago region, after he returned from a Christmas prayer service at a church in Pauk Khaung Township. Authorities accused him of being linked to the People's Defense Force (PDF)—an armed resistance group against the military rule—after searching him at a check point.
Reportedly, Salai Ayla Lone Wai was interrogated at the 959th Battalion base in Pyay, and his family and relatives were not able to contact him.
On October 21, 2022, he was sentenced to 10 years of imprisonment under Penal Code Section 505(a) and terrorism charges.
His arrest took place after several Christian leaders from the Magway Region and Chin State were reportedly killed by the military.
"အုတ်ဖိုမြို့က ခရစ်ယာန် ဓမ္မဆရာတစ်ဦး အဖမ်းခံရ" Radio Free Asia (RFA)
"Still Detained" List Assistance Association for Political Prisoners (AAPP)
"အုတ်ဖိုမှ ဓမ္မဆရာ ပြန်မလွတ်သေးသဖြင့် မိတ်ဆွေများ စိတ်ပူနေ" Myanmar Now
"ချင်းအမျိုးသား ဓမ္မဆရာ ဖမ်းဆီးခံရပြီး စစ်ကြောရေးမှာ အသက်အန္တရာယ် စိုးရိမ်ရ" Red News Agency