The Myanmar government under Aung San Suu Kyi has continued using oppressive, military rule-era laws to prosecute peaceful critics, quashing hopes the country's first democratic leader in decades would safeguard free speech, according to a damning new report by a prominent rights group.

Freedom of expression has been worsening since the Nobel peace laureate's administration took office in 2016, with prosecutions creating a "climate of fear" among journalists, Human Rights Watch (HRW) said yesterday. "Aung San Suu Kyi and the National League for Democracy promised a new Myanmar but the government still prosecutes peaceful speech and protests and has failed to revise old oppressive laws," Linda Lakhdhir, Asia legal adviser at HRW and the report's author, said in a statement.

There was no immediate comment from the Myanmar government.

Linder nearly 50 years of notorious military rule, the country's government had placed severe restrictions on freedom of expression.

Reforms undertaken by the quasicivilian administration that came to power in 2010, including the abolition of censorship, had "positive implications for speech and assembly", HRW said in its report, titled Dashed Hopes: The Criminalisation of Peaceful Expression in Myanmar.

However, the government led by de facto civilian leader Aung San Suu Kyi had made "only marginal changes" to oppressive legislation and continued to use "overly broad, vague, and abusive laws" to prosecute peaceful speech and assembly, it said.

Speaking to Al Jazeera from Yangon in southern Myanmar, Lakhdhir focused on the plight of journalists in Myanmar, specifically when they cover issues considered sensitive by the government

"There are certain topics that seems to be off limits such as criticising the military, talking about military abuses, criticising the government or government officials and talking bout corruption," said Lakhdhir.

"If you report on ethnic armed groups or travel to conflict areas to report then you risk getting arrested."

Myanmar free speech group Athan, whose report was quoted by H RW, said some 140 cases had been filed since 2016 under the Telecommunications Act, at least half of which involved prosecution for peaceful speech.

Parliament made some amendments to section 66(d) of the act, which punishes anyone who "defames" someone using a telecommunications network with up to two years in prison, but rejected calls to repeal the provision.

Reporters were especially vulnerable to prosecution and attacks, HRW said,

with threats coming from authorities as well as nationalists and 'militant' supporters of the government or army.

"The result has been a climate of fear among local journalists," the HRW report said.

Laws criminalising defamation, the Official Secrets Act, the Unlawful Associations Act, the 1934 Aircraft Act, and section 131 of the Myanmar Penal Code have all been used against journalists in recent years.