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HONG KONG – Vice President Mike Pence on Tuesday expressed his support for two Reuters journalists in Myanmar who were sentenced the previous day, adding to a growing scandal of indignation over a case widely perceived as Myanmar's crackdown on the media.
U Wa Lone and U Kyaw Soe Oo journalists were sentenced to seven years in prison on Monday after being found guilty of violating Myanmar's official secrecy laws, provoking outrage among journalists and diplomats foreigners and human rights groups around the world.
In consecutive Twitter messages on Tuesday, Mr Pence said he was "deeply troubled" by the decision and that the Myanmar government should reverse it. He added that the two men had simply "done their job in reporting the atrocities committed against the Rohingya people", a reference to the massacres and ethnic cleansing of the Rohingya ethnic minority near the border between Myanmar and Bangladesh.
US Ambassador to the United Nations, Nikki R. Haley, also spoke out against the verdict on Tuesday, using language that echoes the way human rights groups described the trial of the two journalists. . Haley said the men were "in jail for telling the truth."
But some Twitter users said that it was ironic Mr Pence expressed his support for the freedom of the press at a time when the President himself regularly denigrated the media as "the enemy of the people". Threats and taunts from his supporters have prompted press networks to hire guards for some correspondents.
Wa Lone, 32, and Kyaw Soe Oo, 28, were arrested and detained last December, just after a police corporal gave them two pieces of paper at a restaurant in Yangon, the largest city in the country. Myanmar. They had investigated a massacre in the far west of Myanmar last September against 10 Rohingya Muslim villagers.
Defenders of the journalists said their only crime was to document the killings and ethnic cleansing of the Rohingyas by soldiers and Buddhist crowds in Rakhine State in the western west in August 2017. were a pattern.
But the captain was punished for his testimony with a year in jail and the judge of the case finally ruled that Reuters' reporters were planning to harm the country by sharing his secrets.
At a press conference Tuesday, reporters' lawyers said they would do everything in their power to release their clients, who can still appeal or ask for pardon.
Women journalists, who insisted on the innocence of the men, said to have been surprised by the verdict.
"They did their job as journalists," said Chit Su Win, wife of Mr. Kyaw Soe Oo.
Mr. Wa Lone's wife, Pan Ei Mon, who gave birth to the couple's first child last month, expressed disappointment over the words of the de facto leader of Myanmar, Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, winner. of the Nobel Peace Prize. admired for all our life. "
In an interview before the verdict with the Japanese NHK television channel, Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi said that the journalists had been arrested not for covering what she called "the Rakhine problem", but for having broken the law on official secrets. She stated that a decision on their guilt or innocence would fall to justice.
Ms. Pan Ei Mon said, "Since becoming pregnant, I have remained strong in the hope that Wa Lone will be released. After the verdict yesterday, it seems that my hopes have been destroyed. "
Stephen J. Adler, president and editor-in-chief of Reuters, said in a statement Monday that the verdict against journalists was "intended to silence their reports and intimidate the press."
"This is a big step backwards in Myanmar's transition to democracy, can not be paralleled by the rule of law or freedom of expression and needs to be urgently corrected by the Myanmar government" , did he declare.
Despite all the recent pressure and recent US sanctions against some of Myanmar's top generals, Aung San Suu Kyi refused to criticize the military campaign against the Rohingya, let alone call for the release of the journalists.
In Myanmar, many people consider the Rohingya to be illegal immigrants from Bangladesh, even though the Rohingya have been living in Myanmar for generations.
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