Myanmar Sentences Reuters Journalists to 7 Years in Prison
BANGKOK — Two Reuters reporters who documented a massacre of Rohingya Muslim villagers in Myanmar were found guilty Monday of possessing secret documents and sentenced to seven years in prison.
The judge in the case, U Ye Lwin, said he based his verdict in part on documents found on the cellphones of the two reporters, U Wa Lone and U Kyaw Soe Oo, after they were arrested.
“It cannot be said that they were doing normal journalistic work,” the judge said. “And the top secret documents they were holding can be useful to the enemies of the country or the ones who oppose the country.”
Western governments and rights groups around the world had urged Myanmar to free the journalists as a sign of commitment to the establishment of democracy and freedom of expression.
The courtroom was packed with journalists and foreign diplomats, including the United States ambassador to Myanmar, Scot Marciel, who have closely monitored the case.
“The decision is very disappointing,” said one of the reporters’ lawyers, Khin Maung Zaw, after the hearing. “This is bad for the rule of law, bad for freedom of expression. This decision is against democracy.”
The Reuters president and editor in chief, Stephen J. Adler, called the verdict an “injustice” and urged the Myanmar 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, 32, and Mr. Kyaw Soe Oo, 28, were arrested in mid-December after a police officer insisted on meeting them at a restaurant in Yangon and handed them some rolled-up papers.
The two journalists contended during the trial that the police entrapped them. They testified that they were arrested so quickly that they never had a chance to read the documents.
At the time, the two reporters were investigating the massacre of 10 Rohingya villagers in Rakhine State by members of the military and Buddhist civilians. Their report, including photographs of the 10 victims tied up and kneeling before their executions, was published after the reporters’ arrest.
The massacre occurred during violent attacks on Rohingya Muslims by Myanmar’s military and local Buddhist mobs that drove hundreds of thousands of refugees into neighboring Bangladesh in what has been widely condemned as ethnic cleansing.
“The decision makes me so upset,” Mr. Wa Lone said after the verdict was announced. “I didn’t do anything wrong.”
At trial, the defense argued 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 their arrests.
A police captain who told the court that the arrests were a setup was punished for his testimony with a year in prison.
The captain, Moe Yan Naing, testified that a more senior officer had ordered a police corporal to plant the documents on Mr. Wa Lone.
“I am revealing the truth, because police of any rank must maintain their own integrity,” Mr. Moe Yan Naing told reporters after he testified. “It is true that they were set up.”
He was later sentenced in secret to 12 months in prison for violating the police disciplinary code.
In his ruling, Judge Ye Lwin accepted the journalists’ argument that they had not read the documents that they were handed, but still found that they possessed the papers illegally.
He said he also based the guilty verdict on confidential letters and plans that were found on their locked phones.
The defense argued during trial that the information in those documents was already public before the two were arrested.
In addition, the judge said that phone numbers they possessed, such as the number of a contact with the Rohingya insurgent group the Arakan Army, was further evidence of their intention to undermine the government.
The defense countered that having the telephone numbers of people from different perspectives was a normal part of a journalist’s job.
The two reporters were charged under Myanmar’s colonial-era Official Secrets Act, and the case was prosecuted by the government of Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, the Nobel Peace Prize laureate who spent 15 years under house arrest under the previous military government.
She said in a June interview with the Japanese television network NHK that they “were arrested because they broke the Official Secret Act” but that it was up to the judicial system to decide whether they were guilty.
Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi has been widely criticized overseas for not speaking up against what some term a genocide of the Rohingya. She also had been urged by rights groups worldwide to release the two journalists.
Given her stand on the case so far, it is unclear whether she will respond to foreign pressure to overrule the verdict and free the two journalists.
Diplomats and rights advocates were outspoken in their criticism of the verdict.
“It’s deeply troubling for everybody who has struggled so hard here for media freedom,” Mr. Marciel, the United States ambassador, said after the verdict.
Sean Bain, legal adviser in Yangon for the International Commission of Jurists, said the trial was “grossly unfair” and that punishing journalists for exposing human rights violations undermines the rule of law.
“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.
Thurein Win contributed reporting from Yangon, and Saw Nang contributed reporting from Washington D.C.
Bagikan Berita Ini
0 Response to "Myanmar Sentences Reuters Journalists to 7 Years in Prison"
Post a Comment