Myanmar Sentences Reuters Journalists to 7 Years in Prison

Post Reply New Topic

Mr. Wa Lone, 32, and Mr. Kyaw Soe Oo, 28, were targeted by the police while they were investigating a massacre of 10 Rohingya Muslim villagers in Rakhine State.

The massacre took place a year ago, during a broader wave of arson, rape and killing by soldiers that drove more than 700,000 Rohingya into neighboring Bangladesh, in what has been widely condemned as ethnic cleansing. The Rohingya have lived in Myanmar for generations, but many Burmese consider them to be illegal immigrants from Bangladesh.

The two journalists found evidence that members of the military and Buddhist civilians killed 10 Rohingya males in the village of Inn Din. Their report, with photographs of the victims tied up and kneeling before their executions, and evidence of the mass grave where they were buried, was published after the reporters’ arrest...

The Reuters president and editor in chief, Stephen J. Adler, called the verdict an “injustice” and urged Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi’s government to step in and free them.

“These two admirable reporters have already spent nearly nine months in prison on false charges designed to silence their reporting and intimidate the press,” he said. “Without any evidence of wrongdoing and in the face of compelling evidence of a police setup, today’s ruling condemns them to the continued loss of their freedom and condones the misconduct of security forces.”

Mr. Wa Lone and Mr. Kyaw Soe Oo, who have repeatedly denounced the authorities’ actions, said after the hearing that they were disappointed by the verdict and the prison sentence, and insisted again that they had done nothing wrong.

At trial, the defense argued that it was a clear case of entrapment by the police, and that none of the prosecution’s 17 witnesses had produced evidence of a crime.

One prosecution witness who said he was present during the arrests admitted under cross-examination that he had written the location on his hand so he would not forget it while he was testifying.

Another officer admitted that he burned his notes of the arrest. Yet another police witness acknowledged that the information in the supposedly secret documents had been published in newspaper reports before the arrests.

A police captain who told the court in April that the arrests had been a setup was punished for his testimony with a year in prison. “I am revealing the truth, because police of any rank must maintain their own integrity,” the captain, Moe Yan Naing told reporters after he testified. “It is true that they were set up.”...

“The outrageous convictions of the Reuters journalists show Myanmar courts’ willingness to muzzle those reporting on military atrocities,” said Brad Adams, Asia director at Human Rights Watch. “These sentences mark a new low for press freedom and further backsliding on rights under Aung San Suu Kyi’s government.”