Naypyidaw: Two Reuters journalists were accorded prison term for seven years in Myanmar on charges of leaking state secrets, reported the news agency AFP.  Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo were taken into custody last year for carrying official documents which police provided to them. Both have been served in a Myanmar jail since December. The order of this sentencing has once more raised the worries about freedom of press in Myanmar which has faced worldwide criticism owing to a furious human rights emergency and mass-migration of the Rohingya community.

Worth mention here Myanmar carried out the sentencing came in spite of international backlash. The two journalists, who were detained on December 12, have been charged under a colonial-era law for getting hold of "important secret papers" from two police officers. As per the reports of  the news agency AP,  the police officials were based in Rakhine state which is iniquitous for human rights abuses of Rohingya Muslims and mass departure of 650,000 members to Bangladesh. A number of journalists wearing black stood outside the court in solidarity with their contemporaries who were led into the court smiling and flashing thumbs-up to the people thronged outside.

In the most recent U.S. expression of apprehension, Washington’s envoy to the United Nations, Nikki Haley, stated the Trump administration likely to see the two journalists be acquitted of all charges.