Myanmar leader defends journalists’ imprisonment

Myanmar’s leader Aung San Suu Kyi defended on Thursday the jailing of two Reuters news agency journalists convicted of collecting state secrets.

Wa Lone, 32, and Kyaw Soe Oo, 28, were imprisoned last week after being found guilty of breaching the country’s hardline Official Secrets Act while reporting on atrocities committed against Rohingya Muslims during a military crackdown in Rakhine state.

“They were not jailed because they were journalists, they were jailed because ... the court has decided that they have broken the Official Secrets Act,” Suu Kyi said at the World Economic Forum on ASEAN in Vietnam. The journalists were investigating the killing of Rohingya villagers by security forces at the time of their arrest last December and had pleaded not guilty.