Myanmar leader Aung San Suu Kyi has vehemently defended the imprisonment of the two Reuters journalists who were given seven-year jail terms after reporting on the massacre of Rohingya Muslims in Rahkine state.

Aung San Suu Kyi had remained notably silent over the case, which was widely condemned by international governments and the UN as a miscarriage of justice and a symbol of the major regression of freedom of expression in Myanmar.

But in her first public comments since the verdicts were handed down to Wa Lone, and Kyaw Soe Oo last week, Aung San Suu Kyi insisted their imprisonment was justified and that the case had “nothing to do with freedom of expression”. She said Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo “were not jailed for being journalists” but for breaking the colonial-era Official Secrets Act.

Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo and the international community have said they were targeted for their investigation into the human rights abuses and mass killings of the Rohingya in Rahkine state by the Myanmar military. The violence, which the UN has condemned as both genocide and ethnic cleansing, sent more than 700,000 Rohingya fleeing over the border to Bangladesh.

Aung San Suu Kyi stood firm on the verdict however, diminishing hopes by some that she may lead a call for the pair to be pardoned. “They were jailed because sentence has been passed on them, because the court has decided they have broken the Official Secrets Act,” she said, addressing the World Economic Forum in Hanoi, Vietnam.

Aung San Suu Kyi openly challenged people to read the judgment and “point out where there has been a miscarriage of justice”.

“I wonder whether very many people have actually read the summary of the judgment which had nothing to do with freedom of expression at all, it had to do with an Official Secrets Act.” She added that the “rule of law” mean that “they have every right to appeal the judgment and to point out why the judgment was wrong”.

During her 15 years under house arrest in Myanmar, Aung San Suu Kyi, who is now state counsellor, was the country’s greatest defender of freedom of the press. However, the eight-month trial of the Reuters journalists was widely decried as being a farce by the UN, the US government and human rights activists worldwide. The pair say they were framed by the police and, during the trial, witnesses who supported their story were imprisoned.

In her comments in Hanoi on Thursday, Aung San Suu Kyi conceded her government could have handled the situation in Rakhine state better. The military began their brutal crackdown after members of the Rohingya militant group, the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army, attacked several Myanmar police posts and a military base in August 2017.

“There are of course ways in which, with hindsight, the situation could’ve been handled better,” said Suu Kyi. “But we believe that in order to have long-term security and stability we have to be fair to all sides. We can’t choose who should be protected by rule of law,” she said.

Aung San Suu Kyi has fallen from grace in the international community over the violence against the Rohingya over the past year. She won the Nobel peace prize in 1991 for her years speaking out for democracy and freedom of expression in Myanmar whilst under house arrest.

However in the last year several bodies have withdrawn major honours from her, for failing to protect the Rohingya minority. These groups include a major British trade union, the London School of Economics, the US Holocaust Museum, Dublin and at least four UK cities.

Inside Myanmar, however, she remains nearly as popular as ever, seen as a bulwark against both military encroachment into politics and international condemnation.

Reuters contributed to this report

Read Full Article>>

Related:

Aung San Suu Kyi to be stripped of Freedom of Edinburgh award

Myanmar: pleas for release of Reuters journalists mount

Aung San Suu Kyi lives in ‘bubble’, says US diplomat in row with Myanmar

Fact check: Aung San Suu Kyi’s speech on the Rohingya crisis

Aung San Suu Kyi: what has happened to Myanmar’s icon of morality?

Aung San Suu Kyi defends her handling of Myanmar violence

Aung San Suu Kyi says ‘terrorists’ are misinforming world about Myanmar violence

Aung San Suu Kyi denies ethnic cleansing of Rohingya Muslims in Myanmar

Donald Trump has falsely claimed that 3,000 people did not die in Puerto Rico from Hurricane Maria, and said the number was made up by the Democratic party “to make me look as bad as possible”.

Despite significant evidence showing nearly 3,000 people were killed in the devastating storm last year, Trump tweeted an extraordinary claim that the official death toll was a political scheme, two days after he was sharply criticised for saying the government had an “unsung success” in its response to Maria.

Puerto Rico’s government raised the official death toll from 64 people to 2,975 late last month following the publication of new research by George Washington University’s Milken Institute School of Public Health.

Though the official death toll was changed, reports by other academic institutions and newspapers estimated the death toll was in the thousands as early as December 2017. But Trump contested these findings on Thursday.

A report published in May by the Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health said up to 4,600 people were killed and an investigation published in December by the Center for Investigative Journalism found the actual death toll exceeded 1,000 people.

The adjustment of the official death toll followed nearly a year of campaigning by journalists, activists and academics to get the government to officially acknowledge the scale of devastation because 64 people was always considered an underestimate. The George Washington University report said the actual number of excess deaths was estimated to be in the range of 2,658 to 3,290.

Trump’s visit to Puerto Rico in October 2017 was defined by the moment he threw paper towels into a crowd of people as aid agencies and journalists warned of a major humanitarian crisis spanning the island of 3.3 million people.

On his visit, he appeared to complain about the cost of the recovery effort. “I hate to tell you, Puerto Rico, but you’ve thrown our budget a little out of whack,” he said at a briefing shortly after arriving on the island.

Maria, which made landfall as a category 4 storm, caused an island-wide power outage, almost completely knocked out communications including satellite phones and left 80% of the island without access to water in the days following the storm.

The majority of the island’s 69 hospitals were without electricity or fuel for generators a week after Maria made landfall. The supply chain crumbled, preventing people across the island from getting food, water and fuel.

Trump’s claim that when he left the island there had been “anywhere from six to 18 deaths” does not acknowledge that before he arrived, Puerto Rico’s health secretary said it was fair to assume the number would rise. Centro de Periodismo Investigativo (CPI), a local investigative journalism project, also reported before Trump’s visit that hospital mortuaries were at capacity and people were not able to bury dead relatives because funeral homes were unable to operate.

There is no indication Trump raised “billions” to help rebuild the island and the government’s Federal Emergency Management Agency (Fema) has said its recovery efforts were strained after responding to two other major hurricanes weeks before Maria.

The mayor of San Juan, Carmen Yulín Cruz, responded to Trump on Twitter: “This is what denial following neglect looks like: Mr Pres in the real world people died on your watch. YOUR LACK OF RESPECT IS APPALLING!

Read Full Article>>