U.S. Vice-President Mike Pence is calling on Myanmar to immediately release two journalists who were sentenced to seven years’ imprisonment on charges of possessing state secrets in connection with their reporting on massacres against Rohingya Muslims.
Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo from the Reuters news agency were sentenced Monday in proceedings that were widely decried as unfair.
Coverage of the jailing of two journalists in Myanmar:
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Reuters boss calls for release of journalists imprisoned in Myanmar, says trial was a ‘set-up’ -
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U.N. slams Myanmar for crackdown on journalists, freedom of press -
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Myanmar jails two Reuters journalists, igniting international outcry -
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U.N. human rights chief Bachelet urges Myanmar to free Reuters reporters -
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Myanmar court finds Reuters reports guilty of state secrets charges -
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Verdict in journalist case must ‘be corrected by Myanmar government’ says Reuters’ Stephen Adler
They had reported about the army’s brutal counterinsurgency campaign that drove 700,000 Rohingya to flee to Bangladesh.
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The subject is sensitive in Myanmar because of worldwide condemnation of the military’s human rights abuses, which it denies.
READ MORE: Aung San Suu Kyi, Nobel laureate and honourary Canadian, slammed after Myanmar imprisons journalists
Pence tweeted the two should be “commended-not imprisoned-for their work exposing human rights violations & mass killings.”
He says: “Freedom of religion & freedom of the press are essential to a strong democracy.”
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