A student activist arrested in Yangon last year after putting up posters that criticised the junta was handed a three-year prison sentence for incitement at a court inside Insein Prison last week.

Yin Myat Noe Oo, the treasurer of a branch of the Yangon University of Economics Students' Union, was among four detained in April near the Kyauk Myaung Market in Tamwe.

The court took time already served off of the 22-year-old’s sentence when handing down its decision on Thursday, said lawyer Thet Naung.

Yin Myat Noe Oo was arrested alongside Khant Thu Aung, her union’s chair, Phyo Kyaw Naing, a union member and Min Hein Khant, a former member.

She and the three others face an ongoing incitement charge for allegedly supplying information to a foreign journalist via a film director named Thein Tan.

Thein Tan was arrested in April while staying at the Chatrium Hotel. He was accused of selling information to Yuki Kitazumi, a Japanese journalist who was arrested in April but released and deported the following month.

Despite the journalist’s release, Thein Tan and the students are still being tried for the case at the Mingalar Taung Nyunt Township Court.

“The four members of the students’ union were allegedly acting as informants for Thein Tan, who in turn allegedly sold the information to international news departments and supplied Yin Myat Noe Oo with the money, according to the military,” said Thet Naung, the student’s lawyer.

La Pyae, a member of the students’ union, said he and others were fighting for Yin Myat Noe Oo’s freedom.

“We are fighting our hardest for everyone’s release and are revolting against the dictatorship,” he said. “I’m proud of her. We are going to do what we can from the outside until we win the fight.”

Khant Thu Aung, the union’s chair, was reportedly denied medical attention while sick in prison.

Last week, a separate students’ organisation published a letter written by an inmate at Insein that said political detainees were being tortured and denied medical care at the prison.

At least 12,219 civilians have been arrested by the military since last year’s coup and at least 9,206 are still in detention, according to a tally from the Assistance Association for Political Prisoners (AAPP) that the junta claims is exaggerated.