Reuters reporters held in Myanmar were handed papers, then arrested

YANGON: Family members of two Reuters reporters detained in Myanmar said on Thursday the pair had told them they were arrested almost immediately after being handed some documents by policemen they had gone to meet.

Wa Lone, 31, and Kyaw Soe Oo, 27, were arrested on Dec 12 on suspicion of violating the country’s Official Secrets Act.

The Ministry of Information has cited the police as saying they were "arrested for possessing important and secret government documents related to Rakhine State and security forces".

The two journalists had worked on Reuters coverage of a crisis in the western state of Rakhine, where an estimated 655,000 Rohingya Muslims have fled from a fierce military crackdown on militants.

In the first account of the circumstances of the arrests from the journalists themselves, Wa Lone’s wife, Pan Ei Mon, told a news conference her husband said that he and Kyaw Soe Oo had a meeting at a restaurant on Dec 12 with two police officers they had not met before.

The policemen handed them two rolled-up papers and said they could take the documents home and open them there, Pan Ei Mon said, quoting her husband.

"They took the two rolled papers and paid the bill and went out from the restaurant," she said.

"They were immediately grabbed by around seven or eight policemen who handcuffed them and arrested them.

He told me that."

Nyo Nyo Aye, Kyaw Soe Oo’s sister, told the news conference that her brother had given her a similar account of the incident. Police were not immediately available for comment.