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UN chief urges Myanmar government to free Reuters journalists

The reporters, who pleaded not guilty, said they were handed rolled papers by police shortly before they were detained last December, and a police witness testified in court that they had been set up.

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UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres on Thursday called on the Myanmar government to pardon and release two imprisoned Reuters journalists as soon as possible.

"I hope that the government will be able to provide a pardon to release them as soon as possible," Guterres told reporters at the United Nations in response to a question about Aung San Suu Kyi's recent remarks on the case.

Reuters reporters Wa Lone, 32, and Kyaw Soe Oo, 28, were convicted on Sept. 3 under the colonial-era Official Secrets Act in a case that was seen as a test of democratic freedoms in Myanmar.

The reporters, who pleaded not guilty, said they were handed rolled papers by police shortly before they were detained last December, and a police witness testified in court that they had been set up.

The reporters had been investigating the killing of 10 Rohingya Muslim men and boys by security forces and local Buddhists amid a military response to insurgent attacks last August.

Some 700,000 Rohingya crossed from Myanmar into Bangladesh fleeing the crackdown, which U.N.-mandated investigators said last month was launched by senior Myanmar generals with "genocidal intent". 

Earlier, the EU's diplomatic chief condemned Myanmar's jailing of two Reuters journalists, hours after the country's tarnished democracy icon Aung San Suu Kyi strongly defended the men's treatment.

A court in Myanmar jailed Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo for seven years last week for breaching the country's hardline Official Secrets Act while reporting on the Rohingya crisis.

The trial was widely seen as a bid to muzzle the press, and the reporters' harsh sentences have attracted a chorus of international criticism.

EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini repeated a call for the reporters' immediate, unconditional release, saying they had not had a fair trial.

"Many observers saw this trial as a test of freedom of the media, democracy and the rule of law in the country. It is pretty clear that the test was failed," Mogherini told the European Parliament.

"The sentence will also intimidate other journalists who could fear undue arrest or prosecution for doing their job." Earlier Suu Kyi, Myanmar's de facto leader, hit back at widespread international concern over the trial, challenging critics to show where there had been a miscarriage of justice and insisting they had been fairly tried "in open court".

Nobel peace laureate Suu Kyi was once lionised as a human rights champion for standing up to the military junta that ruled her country for decades, but her response to the Rohingya crisis has seen her reputation tarnished in the eyes of many observers.

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