The Reporters Without Borders (RSF) said on Monday it was appalled by the verdict of a Myanmar court, which sentenced two Reuters journalists, who had previously investigated violence against the Rohingya Muslim minority in Rakhine state, to seven years in prison.
MOSCOW (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 03rd September, 2018) The Reporters Without Borders (RSF) said on Monday it was appalled by the verdict of a Myanmar court, which sentenced two Reuters journalists, who had previously investigated violence against the Rohingya Muslim minority in Rakhine state, to seven years in prison.
Earlier in the day, Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo were found guilty of violating a state secrets act of Myanmar.
"As the justice system clearly followed orders in this case, we call on the country's most senior officials, starting with government leader Aung San Suu Kyi, to free these journalists, whose only crime was to do their job. After a farcical prosecution, this outrageous verdict clearly calls into question Myanmar's transition to democracy," RSF Secretary General Christophe Deloire said, as quoted in the press release.
According to the RSF, a police officer had testified during preliminary hearings on the two journalists' case that they had been intentionally given supposedly classified documents and then immediately arrested. The prosecution was based "solely on this trumped-up evidence," the RSF concluded.
The two journalists investigated mass atrocities perpetrated by the army against the Rohingya people in the Inn Din village in September last year. The massacre was one among many episodes of persecution of the Muslim minority hundreds of thousands of whom have fled to neighboring Bangladesh.
