UN urges Myanmar to release Reuters reporters ‘immediately’

New UN rights chief Michelle Bachelet said yesterday she was “shocked” by Myanmar’s jailing of two Reuters journalists for seven years and called for their immediate release.
“I was shocked,” the former Chilean president told reporters on her first day as UN High Commissioner for Human Rights. “The trial was a travesty of justice.”
“I urge Myanmar to immediately and unconditionally release Kyaw Soe Oo and Thet Oo Maung,” she said in a statement.
Wa Lone, 32, and Kyaw Soe Oo, 28, who have been held in Yangon’s Insein prison since their arrest in December, were charged with breaching Myanmar’s state secrets law while reporting on a massacre of
Rohingya Muslims.
The case has sparked an outcry among the international community as an attempt to muzzle reporting on last year’s crackdown by Myanmar’s security forces on the Muslim Rohingya minority in Rakhine state.
Army-led “clearance operations” drove 700,000 Rohingyas into Bangladesh, carrying with them widespread accounts of atrocities – rape, murder and arson – by Myanmar police and troops.
“Their coverage of the Inn Din massacre by the military – for which the military subsequently admitted responsibility – was clearly in the public interest as it may otherwise never have come to light,” Bachelet said.
“Their conviction follows a legal process that clearly breached international
standards,” she said.
“It sends a message to all journalists in Myanmar that they cannot operate fearlessly, but must rather make a choice to either self-censor or risk prosecution.
“I call for their conviction to be quashed and for them to be released, along with all other journalists currently in detention for their legitimate exercise of the right to freedom of expression.”
The reporters denied the secrets charges, insisting they were set up while exposing the extrajudicial killing of 10 Rohingya Muslims in the Rakhine village of Inn Din in September last year.
They had told the court they were arrested after being invited to dinner by police in Yangon, who handed them documents.
As they left the restaurant, the pair were detained for possessing classified material.
But Judge Ye Lwin was unmoved, also choosing to disregard a whistleblowing policeman’s testimony that corroborated their version of events.
“The culprits intended to harm the interests of the state. And so they have been found guilty under the state secrets act,” he told the packed Yangon court.
“They are sentenced to seven years in prison each,” he said.
Kyaw Soe Oo’s wife Chit Su Win wept after the judge delivered the verdict, collapsing on the ground in tears as she filed out of the sweltering courtroom along with other shell-shocked family members, reporters and diplomats.
The handcuffed pair, both Myanmar nationals with young children, gave brief but defiant statements on the court steps.
“The government can detain us in the prison but... don’t close the ears and eyes of the people,” Kyaw Soe Oo said.
Wa Lone, whose wife gave birth to a baby daughter less than a month ago, gave a defiant thumbs up to the massed ranks of reporters.
“We will face it (the verdict) with stability and courage,” he said, before the pair were bundled into a waiting police van and taken back to the notorious Insein prison.
Defence lawyer Khin Maung Zaw said an appeal would be lodged as soon as possible against the verdict, which Reuters denounced as based on “false charges”.
“Today is a sad day for Myanmar... and the press everywhere,” Reuters editor-in-chief Stephen J Adler said in a statement, adding that the outcome was “designed to silence their reporting and intimidate the press”.
The UN, the US, the European Union and EU members Britain and France condemned the verdict and reiterated calls for the reporters’ release, while rights groups added their voices to the chorus of outrage.
Frederick Rawski of the International Commission of Jurists described the verdict as a miscarriage of justice following a “grossly unfair” hearing, citing the lack of evidence and violations of the right to a fair trial.
Reporters Without Borders condemned the “sham trial” and sentencing as a “dark day for press freedom in Myanmar”.
The army has published its version of events at Inn Din village, conceding the Rohingya men were killed while in custody but saying it was a one-off case of abuse by a mixture of security forces and ethnic  Rakhine locals.