BRUSSELS (AP) - European Union foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini is urging Myanmar’s authorities to free two journalists jailed on charges of possessing state secrets in connection with their reporting about massacres against Rohingya Muslims.
Mogherini demanded Thursday that “the prison sentences be reviewed and the two journalists be released immediately and unconditionally.”
Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo from the Reuters news agency were jailed last week for seven years after proceedings widely decried as unfair. They had reported on the army’s brutal counter-insurgency campaign that drove 700,000 Rohingya to flee to Bangladesh.
Mogherini said their reporting matched testimony that she had heard from Rohingya in Bangladesh.
She said observers saw this trial as a test for Myanmar democracy and that “it is pretty clear that the test has failed.”
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