According to Reuters, human rights lawyer Amal Clooney told a press freedom event at the United Nations on Friday (28/09) that the family members of two Reuters reporters who jailed in Myanmar had sent a request for pardon. Clooney also stated that she pressed Myanmar’s leader Aung San Suu Kyi to agree, during the Press Behind Bars: Undermining Justice and Democracy Justice event during the 73rd session of the United Nations General Assembly at U.N. headquarters in New York.
On September 3, two Reuters journalists, Kyaw Soe Oo, 28 and Wa Lone, 32 were found guilty under the colonial-era Official Secret Acts. As part of the consequences, the two were sentenced to seven years in prison by a Myanmar court. Amal Clooney herself is a member of the legal team that represents these two journalists.
Clooney has gathered information regarding her request to Suu Kyi, saying that President Win Myint would decide after a discussion with Suu Kyi.
In a message to Suu Kyi, Clooney told Reuters: “You fought for so many years to be freed from the same prison where they now sit, and now you have the power to remedy this injustice today if you wanted to.”
However, it does not necessarily mean Myanmar would agree to free the journalists. Zaw Htay, Myanmar government spokesman, has stated that the court was independent and the case would respectively respectfully follow the process.
The two reporters have pleaded not guilty to violating Myanmar's colonial-era Official Secrets Act and have been detained since December.
August last year, Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo had been working on an investigation of the operation that targeted Rohingya militants in the Rakhine state of Myanmar. During the operation, it was reported at least 10 Rohingya Muslim men and boys were killed by security forces and local Buddhists during an army crackdown. The operation also caused almost 700,000 people fleeing to Bangladesh. The pair then accused of illegally getting information while covering the crisis.
A U.N mandated fact-finding mission claimed, military groups of Myanmar enforced mass assassinations and gang rapes of Muslim Rohingya with “genocidal intent” and required the top generals to be prosecuted. Myanmar rejected the accusations.
In a forum that took place in Vietnam this month, Suu Kyi confidently claimed that this issue did not have any correlation with freedom of expression. Based on her statement, the reporters had been convicted for revealing official secrets and they “were not jailed because they were journalists.”
In response to this, earlier this month UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has requested the government of Myanmar to pardon and release the journalists immediately.
“This case is about much more than two innocent men,” Clooney told Reuters after an event hosted by the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) on Friday (28/09).
“If you care about press freedom you care about this case ... Without a free press you cannot have democracy because you don’t know how to judge what your government’s doing,” she added.