Myanmar Releases Reuters Journalists Jailed for Reporting on Rohingya Crackdown

From NY Times:

HONG KONG — Two prizewinning journalists were released from prison in Yangon, Myanmar, on Tuesday after more than a year in detention for covering the country’s deadly crackdown on the Rohingya minority group, the Reuters news agency reported.

The two reporters, U Wa Lone, 33, and U Kyaw Soe Oo, 29, were arrested in December 2017 and sentenced in September to seven years in prison under the colonial-era Official Secrets Act for receiving documents from a police officer.

The men, along with their Reuters colleagues, were awarded in April the Pulitzer Prize for international reporting, one of journalism’s most coveted and prestigious honors.

“Today is the day we expected,” said Chit Su Win, the wife of Kyaw Soe Oo. “Now, they can receive the Pulitzer Prize themselves. I truly thanks to the government who let them free. I don’t hold any grudge. I really thank to government. It’s time for a reunion for our families.”

Their case had become an international cause célèbre, with journalists, human rights activists and world leaders calling for their release. Their arrest, like the ethnic conflict they were covering, was a turning point in the West’s perception of Myanmar’s de facto prime minister, Aung San Suu Kyi, who had long been seen as a force for democracy and tolerance.

Since her party took power three years ago, the number of journalists arrested in Myanmar has increased to 43, according to a recent Human Rights Watch report.

In April, the two journalists lost their final appeal in Myanmar’s Supreme Court. After that decision, a lawyer for the men said their last chance at release was through petitioning the country’s president or legislature.

The men were released as part of a mass amnesty for thousands of prisoners by President Win Myint. Traditionally, the authorities issue pardons for prisoners across the country during the New Year, which began on April 17.

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.

The Myanmar military began a campaign to repress a long-simmering Muslim insurgency in 2017 in the restive western state of Rakhine. In all, more than 700,000 members of the Rohingya minority group were driven from their homes and fled to neighboring Bangladesh.

The United Nations has said that Myanmar’s top generals should be investigated on charges of genocide.