Frame-up or not, just the thing to tickle the Duce

Myanmar’s Highest Court Upholds Conviction of Reuters Journalists

He so admires authoritarian regimes and the wonderful powers of their executives.

Myanmar’s highest court ruled against two Reuters reporters on Tuesday, upholding their conviction for violating a state secrets law after they uncovered a military massacre.

The two reporters, U Wa Lone, 33, and U Kyaw Soe Oo, 29, were sentenced in September to seven years in prison under the colonial-era Official Secrets Act for receiving documents from a police officer. 

They have been imprisoned for 16 months, drawing international condemnation by human rights groups and media organizations.

Their defense lawyers argued that the evidence in the case was planted by the police and that the rolled-up papers they were handed contained information that was already public. 

The reporters testified at trial that they were arrested so quickly that they never had a chance to look at the documents.

“Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo did not commit any crime, nor was there any proof that they did,” Gail Gove, Reuters’ chief counsel, said after the Supreme Court ruling was announced. 

“Instead, they were victims of a police setup to silence their truthful reporting. We will continue to do all we can to free them as soon as possible.”

Mr. Wa Lone and Mr. Kyaw Soe Oo have been widely praised for their work in uncovering the massacre of 10 Rohingya Muslim villagers who were fatally shot by soldiers and villagers in September 2017 in Inn Din village in Rakhine State.

. . . .

In Myanmar, the military and civilian leaders share power under a constitution imposed by the military.

Many people in Myanmar and around the world had hoped that Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, a Nobel Peace laureate who became the country’s de facto civilian leader, would promote democracy and free speech.

But instead, she has often allied herself with the military, which carried out what the United Nations has called a genocide of the Rohingya people, killing thousands, burning villages, raping women and girls and forcing more than 750,000 to flee across the border into Bangladesh, where they now live in refugee camps.

Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi has had numerous opportunities to free the two journalists but has refused all entreaties.

Her attorney general, Htun Htun Oo, oversaw the prosecution of the case, which human rights advocates argued should have been dropped.