Press behind bars: Undermining Justice and Democracy -
with Amal Clooney...
Source: https://youtu.be/RnrVeD2PsdM
Opening the event, Joel Simon, Executive Director of the
Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) said “the jailing of journalists has
reached unprecedented levels. At the end of last year, there were 262
journalists jailed around the world, the highest number ever recorded by the
CPJ.”
Out of 262 jailed journalists globally at the end of
2017, 73 were in prisons in Turkey, 41 in China and 20 in Egypt.
Simon also said ‘the jailing of journalists is a brutal
form of censorship that is having a profound impact on the flow of information
around the world. The time has come to speak up and to name names.”
A large part of event was dedicated to Reuters’
journalists from Myanmar, Wa Lone, 32, and Kyaw Soe Oo, 28, who were sentenced
for breached the colonial-era Official Secrets Act when they collected and
obtained confidential documents, according to Yangon northern district judge Ye
Lwin.
Aung San Suu Kyi is key holder of Myanmar: https://youtu.be/uRyBRYsODJ8
Aung San Suu Kyi is key holder of Myanmar: https://youtu.be/uRyBRYsODJ8
At the time of their arrest in December 2017, Wa Lone and
Kyaw Soe Oo were reporting on the government’s crackdown on Rohingya Muslim
insurgents in Rakhine state of Myanmar. Their work was instrumental in
uncovering the details of a massacre of ten Rohingya men, as published by the
Reuters news agency shortly after their arrest.
Speaking at the event, Editor-in-Chief, Reuters Stephen
Adler said the arrest of Reuters’ journalists “was clearly aimed at unmasking
Reuters’ sources and preventing us from publishing the account of the
massacre.”
Adler said “our reporters were handcuffed, hooded,
continuously interrogated, threatened and denied sleep. Two weeks passed before
their families, lawyers or we at Reuters had any idea where they were.”
A human rights lawyer Amal Clooney who represents Wa Lone
and Kyaw Soe Oo, said her clients were “paraded into a courtroom for a sham
trial” and she labeled their conviction and the seven-year sentence “a travesty
of justice.”
Giving detailed explanation of why she thinks the legal
process was flawed, Clooney said "the prosecutor’s story, accepted
wholesale by the court, is not only fabricated, but totally implausible.”
The faith of imprisoned journalists is now in the hands
of the government, Clooney said and called on the country’s leader Aung San Suu
Kyi to act and free them.
She said “Aung San Suu Kyi knows better than anyone what
is it like to be a political prisoner in Myanmar. She has slept in a cell in
the prison where Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo now sleep” and added “history will
judge her on her response.”
Aung San Suu Kyi, a Nobel Peace Prize laureate and
Myanmar’s Prime Minister was herself prosecuted by the Myanmar military
dictatorship in 1989. Lately, she has drawn repeated criticism from many
countries and organizations, including the UN Human Rights Office, over her
inaction on the Myanmar’s security forces' prosecution of the Rohingya people.