Myanmar freed two journalists from the Reuters news agency on Tuesday after imprisoning them for more than 500 days for reporting on military atrocities against Rohingya Muslims.
, ignored worldwide calls to free the reporters, adding to concerns that the Southeast Asian country’s transition to democracy was faltering after half a century of military rule.“I would like to thank the international community and the diplomats who have been standing with us since the start,” their lawyer Khin Maung Zaw said.
“Myanmar’s faltering respect for media freedom … indicates the dire situation facing human rights and democracy as the country moves toward national elections in 2020,” Phil Robertson, deputy Asia director for Human Rights Watch, said in a statement. Wa Lone, 33, and Kyaw Soe Oo, 29, both Myanmar nationals, were investigating a massacre of Rohingya civilians in the village of Inn Din in northern Rakhine state when police arrested them in December 2017.
Court testimony later showed that police officers had entrapped the men by inviting them to a meeting and handing them documents allegedly linked to the army campaign in Rakhine. They were convicted under the 1923 secrets act, enacted under British colonial rule, which imposes stiff punishment for obtaining official documents that could be “useful to an enemy.
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