Opinion | Myanmar is jailing journalists for truthful reporting. It must respect the facts and free the reporters

Stephen J. Adler says two Reuters reporters have been unjustly jailed in Myanmar for exposing a mass murder. In defending the convictions, Aung San Suu Kyi has failed to uphold the rule of law based on facts

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Ten Rohingya Muslim men and boys kneeling in a field in a Rakhine village last year. They were later found dead in a mass grave. Reuters reporters Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo have been sentenced to seven years in jail, after investigating the killing. Photo: Reuters

Published: 12:04am, 20 Nov 2018Updated: 12:33am, 20 Nov 2018

In Myanmar, as everywhere, facts have power. It was the gruesome facts uncovered by two of our reporters for Reuters, Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo, that led to their being framed, arrested, tried and, in September, handed a draconian seven-year prison sentence. Soon afterwards, Myanmar’s civilian leader, Aung San Suu Kyi, vigorously defended the unjust convictions and called on those who disputed the verdict to explain how there had been a miscarriage of justice.

This column – and the appeal we have filed – answers that call. Here are the facts:

The Rohingya are a Muslim minority based in Rakhine state, in western Myanmar, a majority-Buddhist country. Last year, a military crackdown sent more than 700,000 Rohingya fleeing to refugee camps in Bangladesh. The United Nations has accused the Myanmar government of ethnic cleansing; Myanmar says its operations in Rakhine were in response to attacks on security forces by Rohingya insurgents.

Last December, Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo were investigating the role of the military and the police in the deaths of 10 Rohingya men and boys in a Rakhine village; a village elder had given our reporters photographs documenting the mass murder. One showed 10 men and boys kneeling in a field; another showed them in a mass grave, hacked and shot to death. Dozens of people who had been near the murders described what had happened, as well as the burning and looting of Rohingya homes by security forces. Being skilled reporters, Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo interviewed everyone they could: not just the fleeing Muslims but also Buddhists, the police and other security forces.

The shocking evidence they found was indisputable. This is the virtue of on-the-ground journalism practised by reporters who speak the local language, follow strict rules of independence and objectivity, and know their beats. This type of reporting, which is at the heart of Reuters’ work in the 166 countries where we operate, can provide proof of facts in ways that punditry or second-hand accounts simply cannot. Indeed, the Myanmar authorities were forced to admit that the massacre had occurred, even as they prosecuted our journalists for uncovering it.

Their arrest was an obvious set-up, aimed at unmasking Reuters’ sources and deterring us from publishing the account of the massacre. Intimidation was severe: The reporters were hooded and brought to a secret interrogation centre, where they were kept handcuffed, continuously interrogated, threatened and denied sleep. Officers forced Kyaw Soe Oo to kneel for hours when they found the photographs of the killings on his phone. Two weeks passed before their families, lawyers or we at Reuters knew where they were. Once we made contact with them and completed their reporting, we published the explosive story, with the reporters’ full support.

For eight months, with our reporters still behind bars, a court in Yangon heard what passed for a prosecution case. The arresting officer testified that he had burned his records. Another witness read notes he had scribbled on his hand so that he could, by his own admission, remember how to testify.

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