{"id":25358,"date":"2018-12-13T05:23:49","date_gmt":"2018-12-13T05:23:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=25358"},"modified":"2018-12-13T05:23:49","modified_gmt":"2018-12-13T05:23:49","slug":"myanmar-protests-mark-1-year-detention-of-reuters-reporters","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=25358","title":{"rendered":"Myanmar: Protests mark 1-year detention of Reuters reporters"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

Journalists and rights groups rallied in downtown Yangon on Wednesday to mark the one-year anniversary of the detention of two Reuters journalists, who are serving seven-year sentences for reporting on a massacre of Rohingya by the military in Myanmar<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Protest organisers handed out flyers and shirts that read “Journalism is not a crime!” and called for the reporters’ release.<\/p>\n

The two reporters were among a group of journalists named by Time magazine as its “Person of the Year.”<\/p>\n

The demonstrators near Myanmar’s High Court carried placards with the cover of some editions of Time’s next issue that show a picture of the men’s wives holding photos of their husbands. They also released black balloons into the sky and lit candles.<\/p>\n

Wa Lone, 32, and Kyaw Soe Oo, 28, were arrested by plain-clothes police on December 12, 2017, after being “entrapped” in a setup by a senior police official with the aim of suppressing their reporting, according to a police officer who was involved in the Inn Din massacre, which took place in September 2017 in northern Rakhine state.<\/p>\n

The massacre is one of several documented by UN investigators, who say that so-called counterinsurgency operations in the area, starting in August 2017, were carried out with “genocidal intent.”<\/p>\n

In February, Reuters published a detailed account of the massacre and, in April, a military tribunal sentenced seven soldiers to 10 years in prison for murder.<\/p>\n

Myanmar’s military campaign drove 700,000 Rohingya to flee to Bangladesh. There have been many reports of mass killings, gang rape and the torching of entire villages.<\/span><\/p>\n

Immediate release<\/strong><\/h2>\n

Journalists and rights groups renewed calls for the reporters’ unconditional release and for the courts to overturn their convictions.<\/p>\n

Maung Saung Kha, founder and executive director of Yangon-based freedom-of-expression advocacy group Athan and the protest’s organiser, spoke to the small crowd after lighting candles on the pavement.<\/p>\n

“They were unjustly arrested – they were charged [under] an unjust law,” Maung Saung told journalists and protesters.<\/p>\n

“Our demands remain the same: the immediate release of these two journalists,” he added, before asking the small crowd to observe a minute of silence.<\/p>\n

Paling Soe Oo, one of the journalists who joined the rally, said Time’s focus on the jailed journalists was an honour for Myanmar and its journalism community.<\/p>\n

“But I don’t think the government feels shame for its part, and isn’t considering releasing them, not even a little,” he said.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Journalists and rights groups rallied in downtown Yangon on Wednesday to mark the one-year anniversary of the detention of two Reuters journalists, who are serving seven-year sentences for reporting on a massacre of Rohingya by the military in Myanmar. Protest organisers handed out flyers and shirts that read “Journalism is not a crime!” and called…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":25359,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-25358","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-middle_east_news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25358","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=25358"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25358\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/25359"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=25358"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=25358"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=25358"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}