Local journos to don black T-shirts

A group of Myanmar journalists said they would begin wearing black T-shirts yesterday in protest at the detention of two Reuters reporters accused of violating the country's Official Secrets Act, as pressure builds on Myanmar to release the pair.

The Protection Committee for Myanmar Journalists decried the "unfair arrests that affect media freedom".

In a statement on Facebook, the committee said its members would don black T-shirts "to signify the dark age of media freedom" in Myanmar. They demanded the unconditional and immediate release of the two reporters, Wa Lone, 31, and Kyaw Soe Oo, 27.

The journalists disappeared on Tuesday evening after they were invited to dine with police officers on the outskirts of Myanmar's largest city, Yangon.

The two reporters had been working on Reuters coverage of a crisis that has seen an estimated 655,000 Rohingya Muslims flee from a fierce military crackdown on militants in western Rakhine state.

The Ministry of Information said the journalists had "illegally acquired information with the intention to share it with foreign media", and released a photo of the pair in handcuffs.