YANGON, Myanmar — A Myanmar police officer testified Friday that he and several colleagues were ordered to entrap two reporters working for the Reuters news agency, dealing a major blow to the government’s case against the journalists.
Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo have been detained since Dec. 12 on charges of violating the colonial-era Official Secrets Act that could get them up to 14 years in prison. The two helped cover the crisis in Myanmar’s Rakhine state, where a brutal counterinsurgency operation last year drove about 700,000 Rohingya Muslims to neighboring Bangladesh.
Police Capt. Moe Yan Naing told the court that his superior had arranged for two policemen to meet the reporters at a restaurant and hand over documents described as “important secret papers” in order to entrap them.
Human rights lawyer Amal Clooney, counsel for the two journalists and Reuters, called on the prosecution to drop the case, and if not she said the district judge should dismiss it.
“It is now clear to any impartial observer that this case is a bungled attempt to entrap two innocent young men,” she said in a statement. “The U.S., U.K., Canada, the U.N. and the European Union have already demanded the journalists’ release, and further action may follow if the case is not resolved.”
Moe Yan Naing said he and other colleagues who had been interviewed earlier by Wa Lone about their activities in Rakhine had been interrogated under the direction of Brig. Gen. Tin Ko Ko of the 8th Security Police Battalion.
Security forces in Rakhine have been accused of serious human rights violations, including rape and extrajudicial killings, against the persecuted ethnic Rohingya Muslims. Last week, Myanmar’s military announced it had sentenced seven soldiers to 10 years in prison for their part in the killings, a case covered by the two reporters.
According to the police captain, Tin Ko Ko ordered an officer who had previously spoken to Wa Lone to arrange the Dec. 12 meeting, and threatened other police officers he sent to the meeting that if they did not carry out the arrests, they would be sent to jail themselves.
“The reason why I testified the truth was because police should have their own standard and dignity,” Moe Yan Naing told reporters outside the courtroom after testifying as a prosecution witness. “Whatever I testified was the truth.”
He was able to speak to the media only briefly before being led away by a plainclothes security official. He has been under arrest since Dec. 12, apparently for having spoken to Wa Lone the month before.
