By Christy Chu
Since December 12, 2017, two Reuters reporters, Wa Lone and Kyae Soe Oo, have been imprisoned in post-junta Myanmar, and as the country’s prosecution of these two journalists has continued, the international community has witnessed a test of Myanmar’s new and developing democracy.
Despite its colorful history of military control, revolution, and mass unrest, Myanmar recently experienced an unprecedented expansion of political rights, including guarantees of freedom of speech and of the press. In the junta-controlled era of the 1980s, government repression and prohibitions on political participation, especially for minority groups, were commonplace. Decades of strict military rule imparted a deeply rooted legacy on the cultural memory of the young people in Myanmar, so the changes that occurred in the more recent past were completely foreign to those who grew up under the junta.
Beginning with the release of Aung San Suu Kyiin 2010, Myanmar became a land of hope for growing democracy. Elections took place in 2015, and Aung San Suu Kyi’s party dominated, taking control of many sectors of local and national government. The international community waited, expectant for an organized system of democracy to take hold and for the country to become one of free speech, free religion, and free press.
But the military officials in control never fully abdicated rule to the new government. In 2008, laws were passed that authorized the military jurisdiction over essential ministries, along with other broad powers. Myanmar remains a controversial land of disputed control and ethnic conflict, deadly power struggles that have caused hundreds of thousands to flee their homes and cost the lives of many others.
In this novel age of nascent democracy, Myanmar’s people have found themselves in a strange place: some fight battles for daily survival, while others explore the new freedoms they have been granted. Journalists Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo belonged to the latter category. These two men took advantage of the new freedoms to pursue careers, and both wound up working for Reuters.
For Wa Lone, the son of a poor rice farmer who depended on the local military administration to make ends meet for his family, the encounter with the state was a long time coming. Despite several moves seeking employment and a stable place to live, Wa Lone maintained a hopeful outlook on his life. In 2007, he and his friends closely followed the protests against government overreach led by thousands of Buddhist monkswho inundated the streets of the city of Yangon in defiance. They watched as government crackdowns resulted in the deaths of many and the arrests of many more.
In 2009, Wa Lone spent two months in Thailand with intellectuals who discussed democracy, political theory, and other protest movements in history. After his time in Thailand, Wa Lone returned to an evolving nation with a renewed sense of devotion to change. He joined local newspapers, invested in English classes, and did charity work in Yangon. Some of those newspapers included the MyanmarTimes, a publication where Wa Lone developed a reputation of reporting on the country’s internal violent issues.
This trend continued once Wa Lone was hired at Reuters by Reuters bureau chief Antoni Slodkowski, who first met Wa Lone during interviews in 2016. Slodkowski noticed Wa Lone’s determination, which shone despite his trouble with English. Wa Lone was soon hired and quickly began reporting about the crisis Rohingya Muslims faced in Rakhine State.
A highly controversial topic in Myanmar, the discrimination against and persecution of the Rohingya Muslims has had a continuing legacy on the country’s society and politics. In 2015, campaigns for upcoming electionsrevealed growing animosity toward Muslims, who constitute between four and ten percent of the country’s total population. Although Western powers had hoped that this election would represent a turning page in the story of a country with a dark, repressive past and a history of military control, it was instead a show of where true power rested: in the Buddhist majority.
Buddhist monks had been the motor behind many protests that led to change, but Muslims were not necessarily viewed as part of that change. In the 2015 elections, Muslim politicians were blocked from running for office, rejected from both state and local election commissions throughout Myanmar. What occurred in the political arena was reflected in society, and reporter Wa Lone soon began investigating claims of human rights abuses against Rohingya Muslims in Rakhine State.
In 2016, Wa Lone helped publish an exposé that alleged that Myanmar soldiers had raped eight Rohingya women at gunpoint, a story that quickly received backlash from government spokesmen and other Myanmas. Many saw Wa Lone’s actions as traitorous to his country, for how could a man using the rights granted to him by his nation turn around and accuse that very same nation of abuses?
However, Wa Lone pushed forward, refusing to back down on the story and continuing to pursue others that revealed further horrors. Others recognized that Wa Lone, along with Kyaw Soe Oo, were in dangerous territory, and some, including Myat Swe, chief executive of Frontier Myanmar magazine, declared their reporting to be “quite risky”.
When Wa Lone uncovered information about the murder of ten Rohingya Muslims by soldiers from the Eighth Battalion of the Myanmar Army, he investigated more deeply by interviewing policemen, among many others. On December 12, 2017, Wa Lone was still compiling information about the story, and he had been in touch with Naing Lin, a lance corporal of the Eighth Security Police Battalion. Naing Lin pressured Wa Lone to meet him privately and quickly, since he would soon be transferring to another region, according to testimony used in the court’s decision. Wa Lone took Kyaw Soe Oo to the meeting, with an uneasy feeling in his stomach.
Once they arrived, the two men met with Naing Lin, but before they could leave, police surrounded and arrested them. After the arrests, Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo were forced into the convoluted world of merging military and civilian rule with little hope for due process.
As of September 4, 2018, the two journalists were sentenced to seven years in prison for violation of Myanmar’s colonial-era Official Secrets Act, and the international community, including Pope Francis, various heads of state, and the United Nations, have expressed their concern for how Myanmar has handled the situation, citing this as one of many examples that Myanmar cannot claim true democracy with these ongoing situations.
With the progression of time, Myanmar will face increasing scrutiny if these accusations continue, which will be the true test of this developing democracy.