YANGON – Myanmar on Tuesday scrapped a law used by the former military government to silence political activists, which threatened jail for anyone who endangered public morality or execution for damaging telephone lines.

The Emergency Provisions Act, passed in 1950 after Myanmar won independence from Britain, became the military’s weapon of choice to silence dissent during its half a century in power.

Lawmakers from the National League for Democracy party, led by Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi, have been trying to repeal it since they took power in late March.

Many are former political activists who spent years in prison because of the law.

Speaker Mahn Win Khaing Than told parliament Tuesday that legislation overturning the act had been approved.

Under the repressive act anyone committing treason – which spanned sabotage of railways or damaging telegraph poles – could face life behind bars or even death.

Hefty terms were also meted out for other crimes, such as spreading false news or disrupting public morality.

Dawn of a new era in Myanmar as Aung San Suu Kyi’s party takes over

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Previous attempts to axe or amend the act were scuppered by opposition from military MPs, who still control a quarter of the seats in parliament.

Freedom has flourished in Myanmar since elections that swept the NLD to power, with hundreds of political prisoners released and several oppressive laws revoked.

Last month parliament also scrapped part of a law used by authorities to barge into people’s houses late at night, often targeting the opposition.

But activists say authoritarian legislation is still being used to silence criticism of the government.

Despite sky-high hopes Suu Kyi’s government will usher in a new era of free expression, several people have been prosecuted for defamation since her party took power.

In September a man was jailed for nine months for calling President Htin Kyaw an “idiot” and “crazy” in online posts because of a complaint by a local NLD party member.

And, in August, a Myanmar actor was sentenced to nearly three years for scribbling curse-laden insults about the army across his car.

BANGKOK – As Thailand’s rainy season peaks, the government is taking steps to avoid a repeat of devastating floods in 2011 that killed hundreds of people and cost billions of dollars, Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-ocha said on Tuesday.

Floods in the past few weeks, and an overflow of water from the Chao Phraya river, have inundated communities north of Bangkok, the capital, prompting government critics to warn of a repeat of floods in 2011 that killed more than 900 people.

Southeast Asia’s second-biggest economy registered annual growth of just 0.1 percent that year, after the floods hit industrial estates, crippling the electronics and auto sectors, before sweeping down into Bangkok.

But this time round, the floods in the northern and central regions are manageable, Prayuth told reporters. “The government is doing everything it can to manage the water, but in some areas it is flooding because of heavy rain and because other areas are low-lying,” he said.

These steps range from diverting the excess flows to water storage sites to keeping close watch on dam levels, although the latter are not yet cause for alarm.

The government says about 96,000 hectares (237,000 acres) of farmland have been affected by the floods, or less than 1 percent of agricultural land.

Managing water supplies in largely agrarian Thailand has proved a challenge for successive governments, with the government of then Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra being criticised for mismanaging the 2011 crisis.

The military toppled Yingluck’s populist government in a 2014 coup following months of street protests, saying it had to step in to prevent violence and restore order.

Prayuth is expected to visit the central province of Ayutthaya, home to several big industrial estates, on Wednesday, to inspect flood damage there.