Reuters Journalists Will Face Trial for Work in Myanmar - The New York Times
▻https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/11/world/asia/myanmar-reuters-reporters-trial.html
A Myanmar judge ruled Wednesday that two Reuters reporters who documented a massacre of Rohingya Muslims will face trial for violating the Official Secrets Act after they were arrested with papers handed to them by the police.
Judge Ye Lwin, who heard testimony from 17 prosecution witnesses over three months of preliminary hearings, ruled that there was enough evidence to proceed with the case against the reporters: U Kyaw Soe Oo, 28, and U Wa Lone, who turned 32 on Wednesday.
In a case that has provoked international condemnation, the two were arrested Dec. 12 while they were investigating the September massacre of 10 Rohingya civilians in the Rakhine State village of Inn Din. The massacre occurred during violent attacks on Rohingya Muslims by Myanmar’s military and local Buddhist mobs that drove hundreds of thousands of refugees into Bangladesh in what is broadly seen as calculated ethnic cleansing.
In uncovering the massacre, the two reporters obtained photos of the 10 victims kneeling before their execution with their hands tied behind their backs. They also found the mass grave where the victims were buried.
The judge’s decision in Yangon came barely 12 hours after the military announced that four army officers and three soldiers had been sentenced to 10 years at hard labor for their roles in the massacre.