Two Reuters journalists, Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo, were sentenced to seven years of imprisonment after a judge ruled that the reporters breached Myanmar's Official Secrets Act when they obtained classified information while investigating killings of Rohingya Muslims.
The journalists' defense team asserted that their arrest was pre-planned and staged to stop them from furthering their investigations into the plight of the heavily persecuted Rohingya Muslims in the country. On the other hand, the judge sided with the prosecution team that contends the information they released can be used by enemies of the state and terrorist organizations.
At the center of the controversy is a September 2017 report from Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo about the Inn Din massacre, a mass execution of Rohingyas by the Myanmar Army and the armed civilians in the Rakhine village. The crime involved the killing of 10 Rohingya men of two were hacked to death by the villagers while the rest were shot by Myanmar troops. Two witnesses said all bodies were pressed to fit one single grave.
Ever since this expose' Myanmar was placed at the center of heightened criticism from the world over. International community accused the country of ethnic and religious cleansing, especially that Rohingya refugees are fleeing to other nearby countries and most of them are now stateless. The accusation of ethnic and religious cleansing against Myanmar happened at the watch of their leader Aung San Suu Kyi, a Nobel Peace Prize laureate revered globally as a Human Rights icon.
Wa Lone, who is now 31 years old, was raised by his parents who were rice farmers in a small village in Mandalay. He grew up poor but nevertheless discovered a passion for journalism at a very early age. There was only one television in their village and he would always be one among the adults to watch the news. As a child, he would play by pretending to be a news anchor.
Wa Lone started working for Reuters in July 2016 and had since then followed stories about the Rohingyas. He was one among the group that reported about eight Rohingya women and girls who were raped at U Shey Kya village in Myanmar. He was even reporting about Rohingyas a few days before his wedding.
Kyaw Soe Oo, now 28 years old, was a poet before becoming a full-time journalist. He has a three-year-old daughter.
Nay San Lwin, an activist blogger, told CNN that both men were relentlessly covering the plight of the Rohingyas. While other local reporters used slurs to refer to the Rohingyas, the Reuters journalists called them with their proper names.
Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo were arrested on the night of Dec. 12, 2017, while they were leaving a local restaurant. They were arrested by police officers who were not in their uniforms.
Inside the restaurant, the two men met with a policeman who they previously tried to interview for a story. For this particular meeting, however, it was the policeman who invited them to the restaurant and handed them some documents.
During court trials, the two reporters said they were subjected to severe interrogations the night they were arrested. Their heads were covered with black cloth. At one point, Kyaw Soe Oo recalled being interrogated while kneeling on the floor for three hours.
World leaders are now condemning Myanmar in the wake of their sentencing. The most recent came from the United Nations human rights chief, Michele Bachelet. She called for the men's unconditional release. U.K. foreign secretary Jeremy Hunt said jailing journalists who covered inconvenient truths is a blow to press freedom.
Myanmar jailed two Reuters journalists who have been relentlessly covering the hapless condition of the Rohingya Muslims in the country. The sentencing comes as Myanmar has been strongly accused of the ethnic and religious cleansing of the Rohingyas.
(Photo: REUTERS/Antoni Slodkowski)
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