Yangon, September 3
A Myanmar judge on Monday found two Reuters journalists guilty of breaching a law on state secrets and jailed them for seven years, in a landmark case seen as a test of progress towards democracy in the Southeast Asian country.
Yangon northern district judge Ye Lwin said Wa Lone, 32, and Kyaw Soe Oo, 28, breached the colonial-era Official Secrets Act when they collected and obtained confidential documents.
“The defendants ... have breached Official Secrets Act section 3.1.c, and are sentenced to seven years,” the judge said, adding that the time served since they were detained on Dec. 12 would be taken into account. The defence can appeal the decision to a regional court and then the supreme court.
The verdict comes amid mounting pressure on the government of Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi over a security crackdown sparked by attacks by Rohingya Muslim insurgents on security forces in Rakhine State in west Myanmar in August 2017.
More than 700,000 stateless Rohingya Muslims have fled into Bangladesh since then, according to UN agencies.
The two reporters, who were investigating the killing by the security forces of Rohingya villagers at the time of their arrest, had pleaded not guilty.
Press freedom advocates, the United Nations, the European Union and countries including the United States, Canada and Australia had called for the journalists’ acquittal.
The reporters had told the court two police officials handed them papers at a restaurant in the city of Yangon moments before other officers arrested them.
One police witness testified the restaurant meeting was a set-up to entrap the journalists to block or punish them for their reporting of a mass killing of Rohingya Muslims in Rakhine. More than 80 persons, including senior diplomats, were packed into the court on Monday.
Judge Ye Lwin read a summary of witness testimony for about an hour before delivering his verdict, which had been postponed by a week because he was sick.
Kyaw Soe Oo’s wife, Chit Su Win, burst into tears after the verdict, and family members had to support her as she left the court. Wa Lone, in handcuffs and flanked by police, told a cluster of friends and reporters after the verdict not to worry. “We know we did nothing wrong. I have no fear. I believe in justice, democracy and freedom,” he said.
The reporters were arrested on December 12 while investigating the killing of 10 Rohingya men and boys and other abuses involving soldiers and police in Inn Din, a village in Rakhine State. — Reuters
Suu Kyi’s image in shreds
- The jailing of two Reuters journalists shreds what remains of Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi’s reputation as a rights champion, critics say, after she failed to come to their defence or speak up for the persecuted Rohingya minority
- Suu Kyi was once a staunch advocate for the free press and a darling of the foreign media. During her long years of house arrest under the former junta, it was foreign correspondents who carried her message of peaceful defiance to the outside world
- Glowing profiles burnished her image, with comparisons made to the Dalai Lama, Nelson Mandela and Martin Luther King. But her response to the Rohingya crisis has sent her international reputation into a tailspin
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