Two journalists working for Reuters news agency are currently serving time in a prison in Myanmar after they were charged with violating the Official Secrets Act because they were investigating and reporting on the massacre of Rohingya Muslims at the hands of the Burmese military.
Reuters journalists Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo are now in their third month of what could be a 14 year prison sentence. The duo were reporting on the Rohingya massacre in the village of Inn Din. Ten Rohingya Muslims, two of them still of high school age, were murdered by the military. They were either shot or hacked to death and buried in a single grave.
In the past year, it is estimated that 7,600 Rohingya have been murdered by the Burmese military in what the UN has described as a “textbook example of ethnic cleansing”. Many of the Rohingya villages in the country have been completely destroyed and burned to the ground.
The persecution of the Rohingya Muslims has also created a wave of thousands of refugees to flood across the border into neighbouring Bangladesh.
Since they were imprisoned, other Reuters journalists have taken over their work and have pieced together information of what happened in Inn Din. The imprisonment of the journalist has caused a true international out roar and sparked protests in Myanmar.
“Journalists have the right to access the news according to journalistic ethics. This incident is an abuse of justice. This is also evidence that the media are being intimidated in Burma,” said Salai Thant Zin, from The Irrawaddy, a publication run by Burmese exiles in Thailand reporting on Burmese politics.
The work and sacrifice of the jailed journalists is to be recognised by PEN America who will bestow upon them the Freedom to Write Award.
> Naomi Round
