Aung San Suu Kyi backs jailing of journalists

Myanmar's head of government, Aung San Suu Kyi, has backed the jailing of reporters who exposed details of the massacre of Rohingya men by her government's armed forces.

The Reuters pair were sentenced to seven years in prison on 3 September for violating the state secrets act while investigating a massacre of Rohingya men by the military at a village called Inn Din in Rakhine state.The two Myanmar nationals had been arrested while carrying official documents which had just been given to them by police officers in a restaurant.They said they were set up by police, a claim backed by a police witness in the trial.

It's easy to make jokes about her heel turn, but the growing pile of corpses under Aung San Suu Kyi is no laughing matter. As the BBC's Jonathan Head adds:

Not once at the World Economic Forum event did Aung San Suu Kyi acknowledge the suffering of the Rohingyas, or the allegations of appalling atrocities against them by her armed forces. Instead she deflected the question. ... And she fell back on a favourite refrain - the rule of law. It should apply equally to all communities in Rakhine, she explained. The two Reuters reporters, she said, were found to have broken the law, they were not punished for their journalism.... The colonial-era Official Secrets Act is so vague and sweeping it criminalises obtaining or reading any document the government deems sensitive. Under these conditions the term "rule of law" has little meaning.