Human Rights groups are blasting Myanmar for the two-and-a-half year prison sentences handed down to three men for “offending religion” by advertising their bar with a poster showing the Buddha wearing headphones and surrounded by psychedelic colors.

“The whole thing’s been a joke,” New Zealander Phillip Blackwood said in interviews with Western reporters.  “We’ll definitely go through the appeals process.” 

Blackwood’s family in Wellington also plans to pressure the Kiwi government to intervene on his behalf.  “Philip has repeatedly made attempts to show his remorse for the hurt caused,” the family said in a statement.  “We know Philip would never knowingly cause offence as he openly embraces all nationalities and cultures.”

Blackwood, his fellow bar manager Htut Ko Ko Lwin, and bar owner Tun Thurein were stunned by the decision, which comes amid escalating Buddhist nationalism.  Rights groups say this sort of reactionary conservatism is threatening to derail Myanmar’s fragile reform process.

“Unfortunately this isn’t an isolated case, and it takes place in a wider context of restrictions on freedom of expression and peaceful assembly in Myanmar,” said Amnesty International’s Laura Haigh, “We continue to hear reports of political activists, human rights defenders, journalists being detained, being arrested simply for exercising their rights.”

Brad Adams, executive director of Human Rights Watch’s Asia Division said, “This is a very disappointing decision because it violates freedom of expression.  These people were not inciting violence against anyone.”

“The shrinking space for religious freedom in Myanmar is deeply worrying, as is the growing influence of rhetoric by hardline Buddhist nationalist groups,” says Amnesty International research director for Southeast Asia and the Pacific Rupert Abbott.  “Authorities should do all they can to reverse this disturbing trend – not seek to inflame the situation further by pursuing cases like this.”