NAN-F-24
Journalists
Geneva, Feb. 2, 2018 (Reuters/NAN) The UN human rights office on Friday called on the Myanmar authorities to release two detained Reuters journalists, a day after they were denied bail.
“We repeat the calls for their immediate release and for the charges to be dropped,” UN human rights spokesman Rupert Colville told a Geneva news conference.
“We are alarmed at the serious erosion of freedom of expression in Myanmar.”
A court in Myanmar on Thursday declined granting bail for the two Reuters journalists accused of violating the country’s Official Secrets Act.
Although the defence lawyer Than Aung said that the information in documents at the centre of the case was publicly available.
He said a police witness had accepted during court proceedings that details in documents found in the possession of the reporters when they were arrested had already been published in newspaper reports.
Wa Lone, 31, and Kyaw Oo, 27, had worked on Reuters coverage of a crisis in Rakhine state, where an army crackdown on insurgents that started on Aug. 25 has triggered the flight of nearly 690,000 Rohingya Muslims to neighbouring Bangladesh, according to the UN.
The reporters were detained on Dec. 12 after they had been invited to meet police officers over dinner in Yangon.
They have told relatives they were arrested almost immediately after being handed some documents at a restaurant by two officers they had not met before.
Police Major Min Thant, who said he led the team of arresting officers, had on Thursday submitted what he said were secret documents seized from the two reporters to the district court in Yangon.
Police have previously said the documents contained information on the disposition and operations of security forces in Rakhine’s Maungdaw district.
In response, defence attorney submitted copies of several newspaper articles that he said showed the information in the documents was already in the public domain.
“After Aug. 25, the government explained to the media and diplomats about what happened in Maungdaw,” Aung said.
He said afterwards that Thant had acknowledged that when cross-examined.
“The witness admitted that the content of the documents they obtained from them is the information that the public already knew.
“He said the contents are same,” Aung had said.
At the end of the day’s proceedings, the court rejected the defence’s application for bail.
Reading from the Official Secrets Act, Judge Ye Lwin said the alleged offense was “non-bailable, however, he did not elaborate further.
“UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres urged the international community “to do whatever it can” to secure the release of two Reuters journalists detained in Myanmar and ensure press freedom in the country,’’ UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric said on Thursday.
Reuters President and Editor-in-Chief Stephen J. Adler expressed disappointment at the decision and called for the journalists’ prompt release. (dpa/NAN)
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