Wives of jailed Myanmar reporters shocked by verdicts

The wives of two Myanmar reporters for the Reuters news agency said they were shocked by a sentence of seven years' imprisonment against them on charges of possessing state secrets.

Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo were sentenced Monday in proceedings that were widely decried as unfair. They had reported about the army's brutal counterinsurgency campaign that drove 700,000 members of the Muslim Rohingya minority to flee to Bangladesh.

The subject is sensitive in Myanmar because of worldwide condemnation of the military's human rights abuses, which it denies.

Wa Lone's wife, Pan Ei Mon, said at a news conference on Tuesday that she never expected such a harsh punishment "because everyone knows that they didn't do anything wrong." The two men testified that they had been framed by the police.

Pan Ei Mon gave birth to the couple's first child in Yangon on Aug. 10, but her husband has not seen their daughter.

"After I gave birth, I continued to keep strong with the hope that my daughter and her father will meet soon. But I felt like my hope was broken after the verdict yesterday. I am hopeless now," she said.

Kyaw Soe Oo's wife, Chit Su, also said she had expected her husband would be coming home. They have a 3-year-old daughter.

"I believed he would be free, he felt the same," she said. "But it didn't happen, I felt like I am a crazy person." She said she still hopes for mercy from the state. At the same time, she remains proud that her husband did his duty as a journalist.

The lawyers for the journalists told the news conference that they would do whatever they could to get their clients freed. They can file an appeal or ask for a pardon, or hope the reporters could be freed under a general amnesty for prisoners.

In New York, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres also urged Myanmar authorities to review their decision, noting with concern the conviction and sentencing of the two.

"The right to freedom of expression and information is a cornerstone of any democracy. It is unacceptable that these journalists were prosecuted for reporting on major human rights violations against the Rohingya in Rakhine state," Guterres' spokesman, Stephane Dujarric, said in a statement.

Pan Ei Mon said she was saddened and hurt that the country's leader, Nobel Peace Prize laureate Aung San Suu Kyi, had taken a legalistic position in a June interview with Japanese broadcaster NHK by saying that the two reporters were arrested for breaking the Official Secret Act, not because they exposed the army's abuses.

"I am very sad about what she answered because she was the one whom we always admired and respected," she said.

"We loved and respected her so much," she said. "We feel very sad as our respected person has the wrong opinion about us." The case drew worldwide attention as an example of how democratic reforms in long-isolated Myanmar have stalled under Suu Kyi's civilian government, which took power in 2016.

Although the military, which ruled the country for a half-century, maintains control of several key ministries, Suu Kyi's rise to government leader had raised hopes for an accelerated transition to full democracy, and her stance on the Rohingya crisis has disappointed many former admirers.