(Reuters) – Myanmar has accused Reuters reporters Wa Lone, 31, and Kyaw Soe Oo, 27, of breaching the country’s Official Secrets Act, a little-used hangover from colonial rule. Sam Zarifi, secretary general of the International Commission of Jurists (ICJ), said the law can ensnare working journalists “at any time”.
The two reporters were arrested on Tuesday evening after they were invited to meet police officers for dinner in the north of Yangon.
The Ministry of Information said they had “illegally acquired information with the intention to share it with foreign media”, and published a photo of the pair in handcuffs standing behind a table with documents laid on it.
ORIGINS OF THE OFFICIAL SECRETS ACT
The law dates back to 1923, when Myanmar, then known as Burma, was a province of British India. At the time British administrators worried that rival powers could seek to exploit anti-colonial unrest in its South Asian empire.
The act, which amended earlier anti-spying legislation, was controversial in India even at the time, according to a history published in 2009 by the United Service Institution of India, a New Delhi-based think tank.
British military officers pushed for the stronger law over concerns about an “increase in Bolshevik activity”, along with geopolitical threats including “the possibility of racial war between Japan and the USA affecting India”, the history said.
WHAT THE ACT SAYS
The Official Secrets Act covers trespassing in prohibited areas, handling documents deemed secret and communicating with “foreign agents”. It carries a maximum penalty of 14 years in prison.
Zarifi of the Geneva-based ICJ – a human rights group made up of 60 senior international judges, lawyers and legal academics – said the definition of an official secret in the act is “incredibly broad”.
“Just about anyone in possession of unpublished government documents could find themselves facing prosecution and the harsh penalties a conviction may carry,” Zarifi said. “Under this law many good journalists could be prosecuted at any time.”
In India, where the same law also remains on the statute book, courts have ruled that it even applies to parliamentary papers such as budget proposals if they are leaked before they are presented in the legislature.
Myanmar journalists’ group to don black T-shirts over arrest of Reuters’ reporters
“Where a military establishment is involved, section 3(2) of the statute effectively places the burden on the defendant to prove that they are not guilty,” the group said.
HAS ANYTHING CHANGED UNDER SUU KYI?
In May 2016, the month after Suu Kyi took power, the 1975 State Protection Act that had been used to keep her under house arrest for years was repealed.
The Emergency Provisions Act, introduced in 1950 and frequently used against activists after the military seized power in a 1962 coup, was swept away in October the same year.
But the Official Secrets Act and other laws, such as the 1908 Unlawful Associations Act, that have been used to jail journalists and activists, remain in force.
Reuters was unable to reach Suu Kyi’s spokesman to seek comment from Suu Kyi on the use of the Official Secrets Act to detain the two Reuters journalists.
0 comments
Share
