JAKARTA, Indonesia — Myanmar’s highest court ruled against two Reuters reporters on Tuesday, upholding their conviction for violating a state secrets law after they uncovered a military massacre.
The two reporters, U Wa Lone, 33, and U Kyaw Soe Oo, 29, were sentenced in September to seven years in prison under the colonial-era Official Secrets Act for receiving documents from a police officer. They have been imprisoned for 16 months, drawing international condemnation by human rights groups and media organizations.
Their defense lawyers argued that the evidence in the case was planted by the police and that the rolled-up papers they were handed contained information that was already public. The reporters testified at trial that they were arrested so quickly that they never had a chance to look at the documents.
“Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo did not commit any crime, nor was there any proof that they did,” Gail Gove, Reuters’ chief counsel, said after the Supreme Court ruling was announced. “Instead, they were victims of a police setup to silence their truthful reporting. We will continue to do all we can to free them as soon as possible.”
Mr. Wa Lone and Mr. Kyaw Soe Oo have been widely praised for their work in uncovering the massacre of 10 Rohingya Muslim villagers who were fatally shot by soldiers and villagers in September 2017 in Inn Din village in Rakhine State.
They were among the Reuters journalists awarded the Pulitzer Prize for international reporting earlier this month. Arrested in December 2017, they have been in prison ever since.
In Myanmar, the military and civilian leaders share power under a constitution imposed by the military.
Many people in Myanmar and around the world had hoped that Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, a Nobel Peace laureate who became the country’s de facto civilian leader, would promote democracy and free speech.
But instead, she has often allied herself with the military, which carried out what the United Nations has called a genocide of the Rohingya people, killing thousands, burning villages, raping women and girls and forcing more than 750,000 to flee across the border into Bangladesh, where they now live in refugee camps.
Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi has had numerous opportunities to free the two journalists but has refused all entreaties.
Her attorney general, Htun Htun Oo, oversaw the prosecution of the case, which human rights advocates argued should have been dropped.
Earlier this month, the country’s president, Win Myint, pardoned almost 10,000 prisoners, but Mr. Wa Lone and Mr. Kyaw Soe Oo were not among them.
“Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo should never have been arrested, much less prosecuted, for doing their jobs as investigative journalists,” said Phil Robertson, deputy Asia director of Human Rights Watch. “That they are still in prison shows just how wrong Myanmar’s democracy under Aung San Suu Kyi is going.”
Chit Su Win, the wife of Mr. Kyaw Soe Oo, said she had hoped that the Supreme Court would at least reduce the prison sentences of her husband and Mr. Wa Lone.
“I’m very disappointed with the decision,” she said.
Their lawyer, Khin Maung Zaw, said they would seek a pardon from Mr. Win Myint. But since he was handpicked by Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi and reports to her, any decision to free the reporters would almost certainly rest with her.
“Myanmar has a very weak judicial system for freedom of press and human rights,” Mr. Khin Maung Zaw said.
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/23/world/asia/reuters-journalists-myanmar-supreme-court.html
2019-04-23 05:55:26Z
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