Reporters missing in Mayanmar face officials secrets charges

YANGON: There has been no word on the whereabouts of two Reuters journalists three days after they were detained, and the authorities have not allowed their families to visit.

Myanmar’s Ministry of Information said on Wednesday that reporters Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo and two policemen faced charges under the British colonial- era Official Secrets Act, though officials have since disclosed that they have not been charged. The 1923 law carries a maximum prison sentence of 14 years.

The journalists had worked on stories about a military crackdown in Rakhine state, which has triggered the flight of more than 600 000 Rohingya Muslims to southern Bangladesh since the end of August.

“We remain concerned,” the US embassy said on its Facebook page. “Their families and others have not been allowed to see them, and don’t even know where they are being held.”

In Japan, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s spokesperson said the Japanese government was watching the situation closely. He said Japan had been conducting a dialogue with the Myanmar government on human rights in Myanmar in general.

Bangladesh, which is struggling to cope with the refugees, condemned the arrests of reporters working for an agency that had “shone a light for the world on the strife in Rakhine state”. “We strongly denounce the arrests… and feel that those reporters (should) be free immediately so that they can depict the truth to the world by their reporting,” said Iqbal Sobhan Chowdhury, information adviser to Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina.

UN secretary- general Antonio Guterres said the arrests were a signal that press freedom was shrinking in Myanmar and the international community had to do all it could to get them released.

Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo disappeared on Tuesday after they had been invited to meet police officials on the northern outskirts of Yangon.

Gutteres said they were probably detained because they were reporting on the “massive human tragedy”.

Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh say their exodus from the mainly Buddhist nation was triggered by a military offensive in response to Rohingya militant attacks on security forces.

The UN branded the military’s campaign “a textbook example of ethnic cleansing”.

The information ministry said the reporters had “illegally acquired information with the intention to share it with foreign media”, and released a photo of the pair in handcuffs. – Reuters