Jailed Reuters reporters to launch last appeal to Myanmar court

Lawyers for two Reuters journalists jailed for seven years in Myanmar on charges linked to their reporting of the Rohingya crisis are set Friday to lodge an appeal with the Supreme Court -- a last chance of a reprieve through the legal system.

Reporters Wa Lone, 32, and Kyaw Soe Oo, 28, both Myanmar nationals, were arrested in Yangon in December 2017 and later jailed for violating the Official Secrets Act.

Reuters says the charge was trumped up to muzzle their reporting into a massacre of Rohingya men.

The two were convicted of possessing classified information regarding security operations in Rakhine state, from where hundreds of thousands of Rohingya Muslims fled during an army-led crackdown the United Nations has described as "ethnic cleansing".

But their sentence provoked outcry over media freedom in Myanmar with calls echoing across the world for their immediate release.

In January Yangon's High Court rejected their initial appeal leaving their fate in the hands of judges at the Supreme Court.

"We are going to appeal this morning," lawyer Khin Maung Zaw told AFP from the capital Naypyidaw, seat of the Supreme Court.

"We hope they are not going to reject it."