Reuters reporters launch last appeal
Lawyers for two Reuters journalists jailed for seven years in Myanmar on charges linked to their reporting of the Rohingya crisis lodged an appeal yesterday with the Supreme Court -- a last chance of a reprieve through the legal system.
Reporters Wa Lone, 32, and Kyaw Soe Oo, 28, both Myanmar nationals, were arrested in Yangon in December 2017 and later jailed for violating the Official Secrets Act.
Reuters says the charge was trumped up to muzzle their reporting into a massacre of Rohingya men.
The two were convicted of possessing classified information regarding security operations in Rakhine state, from where hundreds of thousands of Rohingyas fled during an army-led crackdown the United Nations has described as "ethnic cleansing".
But their sentence provoked outcry over media freedom in Myanmar with calls echoing across the world for their immediate release.
In January Yangon's High Court rejected their initial appeal leaving their fate in the hands of judges at the Supreme Court.
"Our petition asks that the Supreme Court finally provide justice to Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo, reverse the lower courts' errors, and order the release of our journalists," a statement from Reuters said.
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