The two reporters, Wa Lone, 33, and Kyaw Soe Oo, 29, had been convicted in September and sentenced to seven years in jail, in a case that raised questions about Myanmar’s progress toward democracy.
YANGON – Two Reuters journalists jailed in Myanmar after they were convicted of breaking the Official Secrets Act walked free from a prison on the outskirts of Yangon on Tuesday after spending more than 500 days behind bars, witnesses said.
“I’m really happy and excited to see my family and my colleagues. I can’t wait to go to my newsroom.” The reporters’ wives wrote a letter to the government in April pleading for a pardon, not, they said, because their husbands had done anything wrong, but because it would allow them to be released from prison and reunited with their families.The Reuters journalists were released at the prison to Lord Ara Darzi, a British surgeon and health care expert who has served as a member of an advisory group to Myanmar’s government, and a Reuters representative.
Darzi said discussions about the pardon for Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo had involved the Myanmar government, Reuters, the United Nations and representatives of other governments but did not provide more detail on those closed-door talks.Darzi has been a member of an advisory commission that was formed to see through the advice from a panel headed by former UN chief Kofi Anan on solving the long-running conflict in Myanmar’s western region in the state of Rakhine.
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