Reuters reporters freed from prison
Two Reuters journalists jailed in
Myanmar after they were convicted of breaking the Official Secrets Act walked
free from a prison on the outskirts of Yangon on Tuesday after spending more
than 500 days behind bars, witnesses said.
The two reporters, Wa Lone, 33, and
Kyaw Soe Oo, 29, had been convicted in September and sentenced to seven years
in jail, in a case that raised questions about Myanmar's progress toward
democracy and sparked an outcry from diplomats and human rights advocates.
President Win Myint has pardoned
thousands of other prisoners in mass amnesties since last month. It is
customary in Myanmar for authorities to free prisoners across the country
around the time of the traditional New Year, which began on 17 April.
Reuters has said the two men did not
commit any crime and had called for their release.
Before their arrest in December
2017, Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo had been working on an investigation into the
killing of 10 Rohingya Muslim men and boys by security forces and Buddhist
civilians in western Myanmar's Rakhine State during an army crackdown that
began in August 2017. The operation sent more than 730,000 Rohingya fleeing to
Bangladesh, according to UN estimates.
The report the two men authored,
featuring testimony from perpetrators, witnesses and families of the victims,
was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for international reporting in May, adding to a
number of accolades received by the pair for their journalism.
A spokesman for the Myanmar
government could not immediately be reached for comment.
Myanmar's Supreme Court had rejected
the journalists' final appeal in April. They had petitioned the country's top
court, citing evidence of a police set-up and lack of proof of a crime, after
the Yangon High Court dismissed an earlier appeal in January.
The reporters' wives wrote a letter
to the government in April pleading for a pardon, not, they said, because their
husbands had done anything wrong, but because it would allow them to be
released from prison and reunited with their families.
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