On December 12, 2017, Kyaw Soe Oo, 28, and his colleague Wa Lone, 32, were arrested on suspicion of obtaining secret information, so-called “state secrets”, in Yangon, a large city and former capital of Myanmar. Both journalists say that the real reason for imprisonment is their investigative report about the murder of 10 Rohingya men, that happened on the 2nd of September 2017 in Rakhine state. Even after finding no real evidence, police and government appointed a punishment for them.
Rohingya conflict is an active conflict that takes place in Northern Rakhine state. The conflict has social and religious roots, that happens between Rohingya Muslim and Rakhine Buddhist communities. Inn Din is a small village, where two communes live. On the last days of August 2017, Buddhist residents were told by a police officer to join a secret operation. Villagers started to burn houses of the Muslim part of the local population. Some people tried to hide in the hills but after 3 days hundreds of Rohingya came back to the village’s beach because of the need for resources. 10 killed men were in the number of returned people. Rohingya planned to move to Bangladesh but they were late. Armed Buddhists and troops picked 10 men out of the crowd and said they took them just for a meeting. Later that day, 10 men were seen kneeling down, naked to the waist. As some witnesses said, then they were taken to the school facility, given fresh clothes and fed. In the morning of the next day, Rohingyas were taken to the grave site, where they were killed.
Kyaw Soe Oo and Wa Lone are journalists, who went to Inn Din in order to make a special investigation about the massacre. On the 12 of December, they were in a restaurant by invitation of the police for a dinner. But after the ended, police officers in plainclothes arrested them for possessing secret information. Despite the absence of evidence and a claim statement by a police officer and government official that journalists were jailed for a Massacre case investigation, two men spent less than a year before they were sentenced for a 7 year of imprisonment. Their Wives became outsiders, many friends turned their backs, no one wants to have something in common with the wife of the state enemy. Wa Lone became a father for the first time while sitting in jail. Kyaw Soe Oo has a small 2 years old daughter, whom he hadn’t seen for a time.
The arrest of two reporters can have an affect society, which still lives in the military junta, even though the government had changed since 2011. People need to stand in order to change the system, that has no freedom of speech or justice.
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