A Myanmar judge on Monday found two Reuters journalists guilty of breaching a law on state secrets and jailed them for seven years, in a landmark case seen as a test of progress towards democracy in the Southeast Asian country. On 12 December 2017, members of Myanmar's police force arrested Reuters journalists Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo at a restaurant in Yangon after inviting them to dinner. The two journalists were independently investigating the mass grave found in Inn Din prior to their arrest. According to the journalists, they were immediately arrested after being presented documents by policemen they had never met before. The police made no reference to the restaurant meeting in their press releases, stating that the journalists were arrested outside on the outskirts of Yangon. The pair was charged with possessing classified documents in violation of the colonial-era "Official Secrets Act", which carries a possible sentence of 14-years in prison. Reuters called for their immediate release, insisting that they were arrested for their investigation. After the court's final hearing of their case on 8 February 2018, Reuters released all the findings in their journalists' investigation.
Myanmar police captain Moe Yan Naing, who was arrested for violating Myanmar's Police Disciplinary Act on the same day the journalists were arrested, testified as a witness of the prosecution on 20 April 2018 that he and his colleagues were ordered by their superiors to entrap the journalists by providing them "secret documents" at the restaurant they had agreed to meet two policemen at. He also claimed that he and other officers were threatened with imprisonment by their superiors if they did not carry out the arrests. A police spokesman later commented that Naing "spoke based on his own feelings" and that his testimony "cannot be assumed as true". Naing's family was evicted from police-accommodated housing on 21 April 2018 and Naing was sentenced to a year in prison on 29 April 2018 for violating the Police Disciplinary Act.
On 2 May 2018, a judge deemed Naing's testimony reliable and rejected a request from the prosecution to classify him as a hostile witness. Naing was allowed to provide further information a week later on 9 May 2018, testifying in court that police brigadier general Tin Ko Ko orchestrated the plan to entrap Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo and that he threatened Naing and his colleagues with arrest if they did not "get Wa Lone". In his testimony, Naing told the judge overseeing the proceedings, "I know that police brigadier general Tin Ko Ko instructed police lance corporal Naing Lin to give Wa Lone documents related to our frontline activities in order to have him arrested." A police spokesman later commented that brigadier general Tin Ko Ko had "no reason to do such a thing," and lance corporal Naing Lin later denied that such orders were given to him.
A court charged the two journalists with obtaining secret state documents in violation of the "Official Secrets Act" on 9 July 2018, taking the case to trial after a period of preliminary hearings that lasted six months. The pair pleaded not guilty to the charges and vowed to testify and prove their innocence. On 3 September 2018, the two journalists were found guilty by a court and sentenced to seven years in prison, prompting condemnation from several members of the international community, including the U.S. ambassador to Myanmar, who called the decision "deeply troubling", and the British ambassador, who said that the United Kingdom and the European Union were "extremely disappointed" by the verdict and that the judge in the case "ignored evidence and Myanmar law."
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