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Seven Myanmar soldiers have been sentenced to "10 years in prison with hard labour in a remote area" for participating in a massacre of 10 Rohingya Muslim men in a village in north-western Rakhine state last September, the army said.
Key points:
- Two journalists who investigated the massacre are currently behind bars and facing charges.
- The massacre was part of a larger crackdown on the Rohingya.
- Facebook is hiring more Burmese-language speakers to remove hate speech.
The military said in a statement published on Commander-in-Chief Min Aung Hlaing's office Facebook page that seven soldiers have had "action taken against them" for "contributing and participating in murder".
The massacre was being investigated by two Reuters journalists — Wa Lone, 31, and Kyaw Soe Oo, 28 — who were subsequently arrested in December and are still behind bars facing charges of violating the country's Official Secrets Act.
The authorities said in February the military opened an internal investigation independently, separate to the case of the Reuters reporters, who are accused of obtaining unrelated secret government papers.
The Rohingya men from the northern Rakhine village of Inn Din were buried in a mass grave in early September after being hacked to death or shot by Buddhist neighbours and soldiers.
The murders were part of a larger army crackdown on the Rohingya.
The military operation, unleashed in response to Rohingya militant attacks on security forces in late August, has been beset by allegations of murder, rape, arson and looting.
The United Nations and the United States described it as ethnic cleansing — an accusation which Myanmar denies.
"Four officers were denounced and permanently dismissed from the military and sentenced to 10 years with hard labour at a prison in a remote area," read the military statement.
"Three soldiers of other rank were demoted to the rank of 'private', permanently dismissed from the military and sentenced to 10 years with hard labour at a prison in a remote area."
It added that legal proceedings against the police personnel and civilians "involved in the crime" are still under way.
On January 10 the military said the 10 Rohingya men belonged to a group of 200 militants who had attacked security forces.
Buddhist villagers attacked some of them with swords and soldiers shot the others dead, the military had said.
But that version of events was contradicted by accounts given by Rakhine Buddhist and Rohingya Muslim witnesses.
Buddhist villagers reported no attack by a large number of insurgents on security forces in Inn Din.
And Rohingya witnesses said soldiers plucked the 10 from among hundreds of men, women and children who had sought safety on a nearby beach.
Journalists denied release
A Myanmar court refused to dismiss a case against Reuters journalists Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo after their lawyers insisted last week that the evidence does not support the charges.
The case has been strongly criticised internationally as an effort by authorities to intimidate the press, and prevent coverage of the sensitive situation in Myanmar's Rakhine state.
The two journalists are accused of violating the Official Secrets Act, a law dating from British colonial times, by acquiring "important secret papers" handed to them by two policemen who worked in Rakhine.
If convicted, they could get up to 14 years in prison.
"I am not happy at all," Kyaw Soe Oo told reporters as he walked out of the courtroom Wednesday.
Wa Lone shouted out: "We journalists just did our job as we have the rights of free press in the democracy and now we are facing the charge that could probably put us in prison for 14 years."
High-profile rights lawyer Amal Clooney is part of the legal team representing the jailed journalists.
The United States, Britain and Canada, as well as the United Nations, have called for the reporters to be freed.
The defence lawyers asked the judge last week to dismiss the charges after four months of preliminary hearings, saying testimony from prosecution witnesses did not give enough evidence to prove the pair violated the law.
"The judge said that eight more witnesses are still left to testify and our claims of baseless evidence from prosecution witnesses are not yet true," Than Zaw Aung, one of the defence lawyers, said after Wednesday's hearing.
Reuters president Stephen J Adler said he was disappointed with the court's decision.
"We believe that there are solid grounds for the court to dismiss this matter and to release our journalists," Adler said in a statement.
"Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo were reporting on issues in Myanmar in an independent and impartial way.
"They have not violated any laws in the course of their newsgathering and were simply doing their jobs. We will continue to do all we can to secure their release."
Than Zaw Aung said the next hearing is set for April 20.
Facebook's Zuckerberg vows to work harder to block hate speech in Myanmar
United Nations officials investigating a possible genocide in Myanmar said last month that Facebook had been a source of anti-Rohingya propaganda.
This morning Facebook chief executive Mark Zuckerberg told US senators his company would step up efforts to block hate messages in Myanmar.
He was speaking as he faced questioning by the US Congress about electoral interference and hate speech on the platform.
Facebook has been accused by human rights advocates of not doing enough to weed out hate messages on its social-media network in Myanmar, where it is a dominant communications system.
"What's happening in Myanmar is a terrible tragedy, and we need to do more," Mr Zuckerberg said during a five-hour joint hearing of the Senate Commerce Committee and Senate Judiciary Committee.
Marzuki Darusman, chairman of the UN Independent International Fact-Finding Mission on Myanmar, said in March that social media had played a "determining role" in Myanmar.
"It has ... substantively contributed to the level of acrimony and dissension and conflict ... within the public. Hate speech is certainly of course a part of that. As far as the Myanmar situation is concerned, social media is Facebook, and Facebook is social media," he said.
Mr Zuckerberg said Facebook was hiring dozens more Burmese-language speakers to remove threatening content.
"It's hard to do it without people who speak the local language, and we need to ramp up our effort there dramatically," he said, adding that Facebook was also asking civil society groups to help it identify figures who should be banned from the network.
He said a Facebook team would also make undisclosed product changes in Myanmar and other countries where ethnic violence was a problem.
Find out how you can donate to the Myanmar-Bangladesh ABC Crisis Appeal.
Reuters/AP
Topics: unrest-conflict-and-war, murder-and-manslaughter, buddhism, islam, world-politics, burma, asia
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