A pair of Reuters reporters were sentenced Monday to seven years imprisonment by a court in Myanmar, drawing a rebuke from Nikki Haley, the U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations.
“The conviction of two journalists for doing their job is another terrible stain on the Burmese government,” Haley said. “We will continue to call for their immediate and unconditional release.”
Haley’s statement followed the American convention of refusing to use the name “Myanmar” to refer to the country otherwise known as Burma, because its government was established through a military junta. The Reuters reporters were arrested following their coverage of a massacre of an ethnic Muslim minority community by government forces; the atrocities, and the convictions, underscore the decline of U.S. hopes for reform.
“It is clear to all that the Burmese military has committed vast atrocities,” Haley said. “In a free country, it is the duty of a responsible press to keep people informed and hold leaders accountable.”
The military crackdown on the Rohingya Muslims in Myanmar’s Rakhine territory has complicated American outreach to a strategically-significant state. Myanmar is located between India and China, two of the largest economies in the world, and controls access to much of the Bay of Bengal and the wider Indian Ocean — a valuable position in the renewed competition between China and western powers for influence in the Indo-Pacific region.
“Like so many of our Asian allies and friends, the United States fought for its own independence from an empire that expected deference,” Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said in July. “We thus have never, and will never, seek domination in the Indo-Pacific, and we will oppose any country that does.”
President Trump’s administration imposed sanctions on the government officials involved in the “ethnic cleansing” of the Rohingya Muslims.
“There must be justice for the victims and those who work to uncover these atrocities, with those responsible held to account for these abhorrent crimes,” Sigal Mandelker, undersecretary of the Treasury for terrorism and finance, said when announcing the measures in mid-August.
