SINGAPORE (Reuters)
- U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo called for the immediate release of two
Reuters reporters detained in Myanmar when he met Myanmar Foreign Minister Kyaw
Tin on Saturday on the sidelines of a regional conference in Singapore, the
State Department said.
“Secretary Pompeo
raised the issue of two detained Reuters reporters with the Burmese foreign
minister,” State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert said. “He said that they
should be immediately released and expressed our concern about their ongoing
detention.”
Read also: Pompeo
Calls on Myanmar to Release 2 Reuters Journalists: https://www.voanews.com/a/pompeo-asea-myanmar-reporters-release/4513525.html
Kyaw Soe Oo, 28, and
his Reuters colleague, Wa Lone, 32, are facing up to 14 years in prison in
Myanmar for allegedly violating the country’s colonial-era Official Secrets
Act. Both have pleaded not guilty to the charges and have told the court how
they were “trapped” by police officials who planted documents on them.
The trial has been
adjourned until Monday, when the defence is expected to call character witnesses.
Myanmar government
spokesman Zaw Htay, asked to comment on Pompeo’s call for the reporters’
release, said the case was already before the court.
“According to the
constitution, our judiciary is independent so we must wait and see what the
court decides,” he told Reuters by phone. “Reuters and the families of the
reporters are being treated equally under the law, with all the procedures
being respected. For example, they can hire the lawyers they want.”
At the time of their
arrest in December, the journalists had been investigating the killing of 10
Rohingya Muslim men and boys in a village in western Myanmar’s Rakhine state.
The killings took place during an army crackdown that United Nations agencies
say sent nearly 700,000 people fleeing to Bangladesh.
Pompeo and Kyaw Tin
were asked by a reporter at the start of their meeting whether they would
discuss press freedom and whether this was important to resolving the Rohingya
issue. Neither replied.
Pompeo told a
subsequent news conference that during the meeting of Association of Southeast
Asian Nations (ASEAN) foreign ministers, the United States reaffirmed U.S.
support for Myanmar’s democratic transition but also “addressed the important
steps required to resolve the continuing humanitarian crisis in the Rakhine
state.
Read
also: Myanmar should 'immediately' release Reuters reporters: Pompeo https://dailym.ai/2Mestir
“Progress on these
and other critical security issues is essential to a free and open
Indo-Pacific,” Pompeo said.
The United States
has imposed sanctions on one Myanmar general, Maung Maung Soe, who was in
charge of a crackdown on the Rohingya in Rakhine, after declaring that it
constituted “ethnic cleansing”, an accusation the Myanmar government denies.
The European Union
and Canada have sanctioned more military figures.
The U.S. State
Department did not immediately respond on Saturday when asked if the United
States threatened any further action on Myanmar over the issue of the
journalists or the wider Rohingya issue.