In Myanmar, as everywhere, facts have power. It was the gruesome facts uncovered by two reporters for Reuters, Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo, that led to their being framed, arrested, tried and – this month – handed a draconian seven-year prison sentence.
Last week, Myanmar’s civilian leader, Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, resolutely ignored the facts and vigorously defended the unjust convictions. With the United Nations General Assembly gathering soon, it’s time to harness the facts to secure our reporters’ freedom, as per an international media report.
In an interview ahead of the release of a 400-page report on alleged “genocidal” crimes, Australian lawyer Chris Sidoti said that Nobel laureate Ms Suu Kyi could not escape responsibility for failing to act over the violence.
The report, by three independent experts including Mr Sidoti, provides the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva with harrowing details of mass killings and rape by Myanmar’s military that prompted more than 700,000 Rohingyas to flee to Bangladesh last year.
These Myanmar reporters risked all in the tyrannical culture of Myanmar to report factually and accurately. The overwhelming evidence is, rather, that the police planted the documents in question on the journalists, whose only intent was to report truthfully–and therefore their trial and imprisonment were a farce.
The three-person United Nations panel named Myanmar’s army chief, Senior General Min Aung Hlaing, last month as one of six top commanders who should stand trial in an international court for crimes against humanity.
When an UN report calls for an overhaul of the military and for constitutional reforms to end its dominance we can see the true power of the Myanmar army, which considers Suu Kyi as its chosen puppet and thus does what it pleases.
Years of systematic abuse of the Rohingyas are now coming to light as the systematic abuse that they had to face from the local administration and the army has finally been brought to the light by the brave work of the reporters, among others. The Tatmadaw can no longer deny their crimes before the world. Journalism has done right; it inspires reforms and gives hope.
What is most important to condemn about Myanmar is not just punishing the two reporters from Reuter working in Myanmar, it is the unprecedented brutalities committed by the military junta on Muslim minority. The country is so uncivilised so inhuman that it is useless to talk about press freedom. In terms of brutalities of dictatorship Myanmar is much worse than any other dictatorship anywhere.
We salute the brave reporters, though citizens of Myanmar, showed enormous courage in exposing the genocide committed by their government against Rohingyas.
The world should come down hard on the Myanmar’s savage military junta to make them know how unfit they are for the modern civilised world. We expect the world press to raise their strong voices for putting an end to military junta for saving the people of Myanmar.
Such a brutal force is getting stronger for creating problems in other countries. Bangladesh itself is a victim of aggression by way of pushing their own people into our country and we are burdened with the crisis some ten lakhs Rohingya Muslims. The choice left for Bangladesh appears to be a military confrontation.
Our anxious warning to the world is unless the Myanmar’s powerful war machinery built under the crazy military junta is contained in time, it will pose a serious threat for peace in the region. Peaceful Myanmar does not need such a powerful war machine. Myanmar is, in this sense, a more dangerous country than even North Korea.
