Myanmar’s Suu Kyi defends jailing of two Reuters journalists despite UN criticism
Army-led ‘clearance operations’ have driven 700,000 Rohingya into Bangladesh, carrying with them widespread accounts of atrocities by Myanmar police and troops
Hanoi — On Thursday, Myanmar’s Aung San Suu Kyi robustly defended the jailing of two Reuters journalists reporting on the Rohingya crisis, as she hit back at global criticism of a trial widely seen as an attempt to muzzle the free press. The country’s de facto leader acknowledged that the brutal crackdown on the Muslim minority — which the UN has cast as "genocide" — could have been "handled better", but insisted the two reporters have been treated fairly. "They were not jailed because they were journalists" but because "the court has decided that they had broken the Official Secrets Act", she said. Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo were each imprisoned for seven years last week for breaching the country’s hardline Official Secrets Act while reporting on atrocities committed during the military crackdown in Rakhine state. Suu Kyi, once garlanded as a global rights champion, has come under intense pressure to use her moral force inside Myanmar to defend the pair. Challenging critics of the ver...
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