YANGON - 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 toward 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 defense 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 U.N. 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.
“Today is a sad day for Myanmar, Reuters journalists Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo, and the press everywhere,” Reuters editor in chief Stephen J Adler said in a statement.
“We will not wait while Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo suffer this injustice and will evaluate how to proceed in the coming days, including whether to seek relief in an international forum.”
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.
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More than 80 people, 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.
The court determined that “confidential documents” found on the two would have been useful “to enemies of the state and terrorist organizations”. Documents in their possession and on their phones were “not public information”, he said.
‘NO FEAR’
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.
But the military acknowledged the killing of the 10 Rohingya at Inn Din after arresting the Reuters reporters.
A U.N mandated fact-finding mission said last week that Myanmar’s military carried out mass killings and gang rapes of Muslim Rohingya with “genocidal intent” and called for top generals to be prosecuted. Myanmar rejected the findings.
The International Criminal Court is considering whether it has jurisdiction over events in Rakhine, while the United States, the European Union and Canada have sanctioned Myanmar military and police officers over the crackdown.
US diplomat Bill Richardson was accused Thursday of a "personal attack" on Myanmar's Aung San Suu Kyi after an excoriating take down of the former darling of the global rights community as he resigned from a panel on the Rohingya crisis.
One-time Suu Kyi ally Richardson was one of five foreign members hand picked by Myanmar's civilian leader to serve on the committee.
But after a three-day visit to Myanmar, Richardson struck out at his hosts, saying he could not in "good conscience" sit on a panel he feared would only "whitewash" the causes of the Rohingya crisis.
He lambasted Nobel Laureate Suu Kyi for an "absence of moral leadership" over Rakhine and described her "furious response" to his calls to free two Reuters journalists arrested while covering the crisis.
A Myanmar government spokesman hit back Thursday, accusing the former New Mexico Governor Richardson of over-stepping the mark in his stinging resignation letter.
"He should review himself over his personal attack against our State Counsellor," government spokesman Zaw Htay told us at France24.
"We understand his emotion about the two Reuters correspondents. However, he needs to understand, rather than blaming the Myanmar nation and the State Counsellor."
Zaw Htay said the issue of the arrests was not in Richardson's mandate and he should not have brought it up at his meeting with Suu Kyi.
Myanmar nationals Wa Lone, 31, and Kyaw Soe Oo, 27, face a possible 14 years in prison under the Official Secrets Act for allegedly possessing classified documents that they say were given to them by two policemen.
They are waiting to hear whether they will be granted bail in a protracted case that could take months to even get to trial.
It is thought they had been reporting on atrocities committed by security forces in Rakhine.
Troops backed by hardline Buddhist mobs have torched hundreds of Rohingya villages, forcing nearly 690,000 to flee over the border into overflowing camps in Bangladesh.
They have brought with them consistent testimony of murder, rape and arson in violence the UN and US have condemned as ethnic cleansing.
Richardson's resignation came after Myanmar and Bangladesh failed to meet a January 23 deadline to begin the complex and contested repatriation of refugees.
Richardson joined the Myanmar board as a private citizen, but the US State Department said the Washington administration shares many of his concerns.
After his trip to Myanmar, the diplomat said he was shocked by the disparagement of the media, the UN, human rights groups and the international community by some fellow panel members and Myanmar authorities.
YANGON - Myanmar prosecutors sought charges on Wednesday against two Reuters reporters under the Official Secrets Act, which carries a maximum prison sentence of 14 years, the reporters’ lawyer said.
Wa Lone, 31, and Kyaw Soe Oo, 27, were detained on Dec. 12 after they had been invited to meet police officers over dinner. Family members have said the two told them they were arrested almost immediately after being handed some documents by the officers they had gone to meet.
The two had worked on Reuters coverage of a crisis in the western state of Rakhine, where - according to U.N. estimates - about 655,000 Rohingya Muslims have fled from a fierce military crackdown on militants.
“They arrested us and took action against us because we were trying to reveal the truth,” Wa Lone told reporters as he and Kyaw Soe Oo were led out of the court and back to Yangon’s Insein prison after the 30-minute hearing.
Khin Maung Zaw, a lawyer representing the two journalists, said the charges being sought came under Section 3.1 (c) of the British colonial-era Official Secrets Act.
The act dates back to 1923, when Myanmar, then known as Burma, was a province of British India.
Section 3 covers entering prohibited places, taking images or handling secret official documents that “might be or is intended to be, directly or indirectly, useful to an enemy”.
The Ministry of Information had previously cited police as saying they were “arrested for possessing important and secret government documents related to Rakhine State and security forces”. The ministry has said they “illegally acquired information with the intention to share it with foreign media”.
The prosecutor objected to an application for bail, the reporters’ lawyer, Khin Maung Zaw, said. The court took it under consideration and will decide at the next hearing on Jan. 23, he said.
The government has said two police officers were also arrested for investigation under suspicion of having violated the Official Secrets Act. It has given no further information on the police arrested.
About 30 journalists were outside the court, most dressed in black as a sign of protest against the arrest of the pair. Several had the message “journalism is not a crime” or “release the arrested journalists now” on their T-shirts.
HANDCUFFED
In the court, Kyaw Soe Oo embraced his wife and held his daughter for a couple of minutes. His daughter began to weep as he was escorted away and he had to hand her back to other family members.
Wa Lone’s wife gave him a few small pieces of cake that she had brought.
”I am trying to be strong in everything. I never made any mistake; I never did anything wrong,” Wa Lone said before leaving the court.
The two journalists arrived and left court in handcuffs.
Reuters journalist Kyaw Soe Oo arrives at the court in Yangon, Myanmar January 10, 2018. REUTERS/Stringer
Distraught relatives of Kyaw Soe Oo wailed and reached out to grasp him as the two journalists were driven away from a throng of reporters after the hearing.
Reuters President and Editor-In-Chief Stephen J. Adler said he was extremely disappointed that the authorities were seeking to prosecute the pair.
“We view this as a wholly unwarranted, blatant attack on press freedom. Our colleagues should be allowed to return to their jobs reporting on events in Myanmar. We believe time is of the essence and we continue to call for Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo’s prompt release,” he said.
Government spokesman Zaw Htay declined to comment on the charges but said the two had their rights under an independent judicial system.
“The judge will be decide whether they are guilty or not according to the law,” he told us at Reuters.
A spokesman for the military was not available for comment.
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U.S. IS ‘VERY DISAPPOINTED’
Government officials from some of the world’s major nations, including the United States, Britain and Canada, as well as top United Nations officials, have called for the release of the reporters.
Observers from the United Nations and from several embassies, including the Netherlands, Australia and Britain were at the court.
The U.S. embassy said it was “very disappointed” by the decision to pursue charges.
“For democracy to succeed and flourish, journalists must be able to do their jobs. We call for their immediate release,” it said in a statement.
The French foreign ministry called in a statement for the journalists’ immediate release and for the free access of media to Rakhine State. Authorities have largely banned media from the conflict zone.
Former U.S. President Bill Clinton has urged that they be freed immediately, saying on Twitter on Monday that a free press was critical for a free society and the detention of journalists anywhere was unacceptable.
Clinton was U.S. president for much of the 1990s when the United States pressed Myanmar’s then military rulers to release democracy champion Aung San Suu Kyi from years of house arrest.
Japan wants to raise the matter of the two reporters with the Myanmar government at appropriate opportunities, including a visit by Japanese Foreign Minister Taro Kono this week, Japan’s Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga said in Tokyo.
Phil Robertson of the group Human Rights Watch said that ”if Aung San Suu Kyi and her government really cared about democratic reforms and governance, they could use their parliamentary majority to quickly reform this antiquated colonial law and bring it into compliance with international human rights standards.”
Suu Kyi won a 2015 election and formed Myanmar’s first civilian government in more than half a century in early 2016, although she is barred by the constitution from becoming president.
She has made no public comment on the detention of the two Reuters reporters. The government has denied that their arrests represent an attack on press freedom.
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