On Monday 15 April 2019 in New York the Pulitzer Center handed its award for International Reporting to Reuters staff, with a special mention for Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo who are serving seven years in Yangon’s Insein Prison for “exposing state secrets.” [see more on these: https://humanrightsdefenders.blog/2019/04/13/reuters-journalists-in-myanmar-jail-receive-unesco-guillermo-cano-press-prize/]
The reporting was “not just based on testimonies of victims, which are key and incredibly important, but it includes one after another stories from the people who actually did this, and in some cases were actually proud of what they had done,” Reuters Myanmar bureau chief Antoni Slodkowski told CNN late last year. In April 2018 seven soldiers were sentenced to “10 years in prison with hard labor in a remote area” for their part in the Inn Dinn massacre, where the victims were forced to dig their own graves the day before they were beaten, stabbed and shot to death. The Reuters reporting elicited the only admission of guilt from the Myanmar government, which routinely rejects criticism of the actions of its troops in Muslim-majority villages in the far west of the mainly Buddhist nation.
Fellow prize-winning journalist Maria Ressa is facing increasing legal scrutiny in the Philippines. Ressa shared Time’s 2018 Person of The Year award with the Reuters pair and other journalists as a ‘Guardian’ of truth, standing against what the magazine described as a global assault on the free press. [see: https://humanrightsdefenders.blog/2019/02/07/philippines-killing-and-harassment-of-hrds-goes-on/]
On Tuesday Ressa appeared in a Manila court to continue her appeal against a “cyber libel” charge brought against her organization, Rappler. The case is just one of 11 that Ressa and her staff face in what she says is a politically motivated attack on her ability to cover the presidency of Rodrigo Duterte. “This is not just about Rappler — it has very serious implications for anyone writing on the internet. And we will fight,” she told CNN.
Hans Thoolen on Human Rights Defenders and their awards 