REUTERS REPORTERS HELD IN MYANMAR WERE HANDED PAPERS, THEN ARRESTED: FAMILIES
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| Pan Ei Mon (C), wife of Reuters reporter Wa Lone and Nyo Nyo Aye (R), sister of Reuters reporter Kyaw Soe Oo attend a news conference in Yangon, Myanmar, December 28, 2017. REUTERS |
Wa Lone, 31, and Kyaw Soe Oo, 27, were arrested on Dec. 12 on suspicion
of violating the country’s Official Secrets Act. The Ministry of Information
has cited the police as saying they were “arrested for possessing important and
secret government documents related to Rakhine State and security forces”.
The two journalists had worked on Reuters coverage of a crisis in the
western state of Rakhine, where an estimated655,000 Rohingya Muslims have fled
from a fierce military crackdown on militants.
In the first account of the circumstances of the arrests from the
journalists themselves, Wa Lone’s wife, Pan Ei Mon, told a news conference her
husband said that he and Kyaw Soe Oo had a meeting at a restaurant on Dec. 12
with two police officers they had not met before.
The policemen handed them two rolled-up papers and said they could take
the documents home and open them there, Pan Ei Mon said, quoting her husband.
“They took the two rolled papers and paid the bill and went out from
the restaurant,” she said. “They were immediately grabbed by around seven or
eight policemen who handcuffed them and arrested them. He told me that.”
Nyo Nyo Aye, Kyaw Soe Oo’s sister, told the news conference that her
brother had given her a similar account of the incident.
Police were not immediately available for comment.
On Wednesday, Lieutenant Colonel Myint Htwe, a senior staff officer
from the Yangon Police Division, said: “We took action because they committed
the crime. It needs to be solved in court.”
The government has said that two policemen were arrested along with the
two journalists, but has not given any information since on what has happened
to them. It was not clear whether the two policemen arrested were the same two
men the reporters met.
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| Pan Ei Mon (C), wife of Reuters reporter Wa Lone and Nyo Nyo Aye (R), sister of Reuters reporter Kyaw Soe Oo attend a news conference in Yangon, Myanmar, December 28, 2017. REUTERS |
Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo were remanded for a second two-week period in
custody by a court on Wednesday and sent to Yangon’s Insein prison. During the
court hearing, they were allowed to meet their families and a lawyer for the
first time since being arrested.
The families and lawyer Than Zaw Aung, who has been retained by
Reuters, were also allowed to meet the journalists for about half an hour at
the prison on Thursday.
Than Zaw Aung said at the news conference that the two journalists told
him they were being held in the same block as prisoners facing murder and drugs
charges, and were afraid to leave their cells.
On Wednesday, the reporters said they had not been mistreated in
custody.
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| The two journalists of Reuters Wa Lone, 31, and Kyaw Soe Oo, 27 |
“The situation is okay,” Wa Lone said. “We will face it the best we can
because we have never done anything wrong. We have never violated the media law
nor ethics.”
The British colonial-era Official Secrets Act carries a maximum prison
sentence of 14 years.
Government officials from some of the world’s major nations, including
the United States, Britain and Canada, as well as top U.N. officials, have
previously called for the release of the two journalists. Several NGOs and
journalist organizations have called the arrests an attack on the freedom of
the press.
On Wednesday, a Reuters spokesperson reiterated demands that the
journalists be freed.
“These two journalists are being held for simply doing their jobs and
have done nothing wrong. It is time for Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo to be
released,” the spokesperson said.
News source :Reuters
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