YANGON, Myanmar — Myanmar’s High Court rejected on Friday the appeal of two Reuters journalists jailed last year for violating the country’s colonial-era secrets law in a case that drew widespread condemnation from rights groups, foreign governments and media watchdogs as an attack on the free press.
Wa Lone, 32, and Kyaw Soe Oo, 28, were sentenced in September to seven years in jail by a district court after a months-long trial that saw a key witness for the prosecution allege in court their arrests were a set-up. The two journalists were reporting on the situation of Myanmar’s Rohingya minority, nearly a million of whom have fled the country.
Lawyers for the pair, who have spent nearly 400 days behind bars, filed an appeal to the Yangon-based High Court in early November. Reuters Editor-in-Chief, Stephen J. Adler, said in a statement that the appeal was filed because the initial verdict was “wrong” and the court ignored compelling evidence of entrapment by police.
The conviction will now stand but the lawyers can still appeal the ruling to the Supreme Court of Myanmar, the country’s final court of appeals, which is located in the capital.
The two were charged with a violation of the Official Secrets Act. Press freedom groups and activists say it is being used to muzzle independent reporting in the Southeast Asian nation, previously known as Burma, despite the once military-ruled country now having a quasi-civilian government.
Violation of the law carries a maximum of 14 years in prison. At the time of their arrest in early December 2017, the two were reporting on the massacre of 10 Rohingya Muslim men and boys in a village in Rakhine state on Myanmar’s west coast.
Aung San Suu Kyi, the country’s de facto leader and Nobel laureate, defended their jailing last year, saying that the two “were not jailed because they were journalists,” and that the ruling came from an “open court.” The judge, however, wrote in his ruling that the two were in possession of sensitive documents only because they were working as reporters.
Win Htein, a confidant of Suu Kyi and a senior member of her own party, said he suspected the case was a set-up, calling it a “trap.”
Vice President Pence pressed Suu Kyi multiple times about releasing the journalists during a mid-November meeting in Singapore, according to White House officials. The officials declined to comment on Suu Kyi’s response.
Under Myanmar law, a pardon for the two could be issued by President Win Myint. He would likely need the blessing of Suu Kyi, who is barred by the constitution from serving as president and instead effectively leads the government in the role of State Counsellor.
McLaughlin reported from Hong Kong
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