Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo, the two Burmese journalists sentenced to seven years hard labor for their reporting on the Rohingya crisis, have been awarded the prestigious George Polk Award for Foreign Reporting for “Massacre in Myanmar,” their explosive exposé on the killing of 10 Rohingya boys and men in conflict-ridden Rakhine state.
Polk Award for Foreign Reporting: Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo of Reuters for “Massacre in Myanmar” documenting the execution of 10 #Rohingya.
— George Polk Awards (@PolkAwards) February 19, 2019
The 70th Annual Polk Awards, announced late last night Myanmar time, honor “original investigative reporting by intrepid reporters that requires digging and resourcefulness, and brings results.”
Previous winners include such giants of the news world as Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, Walter Cronkite, Edward R. Murrow, Christiane Amanpour, Peter Jennings, Norman Mailer and Diane Sawyer.
The two Reuters reporters were arrested in December 2017 by plainclothes police outside a Northern Yangon restaurant. They were arrested in a sting that one ex-police captain told the court amounted to entrapment.
Despite overwhelming evidence of their innocence, they were convicted after a lengthy and controversial trial that’s been viewed as a litmus test for Myanmar’s press freedom and democratic transition.
Their reporting revealed a mass grave of 10 Rohingya boys and men that were killed en masse by Myanmar security forces, corroborated by before and after photos, as well as key eyewitness testimonies.
Their reporting forced the Myanmar military’s only admission of guilt regarding their actions against the Rohingya Muslim minority and saw seven soldiers sentenced to 10 years in prison each for the massacre.
In August 2017, Myanmar security forces swept through Northern Rakhine, killing, pillaging and raping Rohingya Muslims in what they justified as “clearance operations” to root out terrorists.
Others honored by the Polk Awards this year include the staff of the New York Times, Propublica, Jane Ferguson for PBS Newshour and David Ignatius and Karen Attiah of the Washington Post, for their coverage of the murder of Saudi activist and columnist Jamal Khashoggi.
Polk judges also gave their first-ever honor to a podcast: “In the Dark, Season Two,” which looked at the dubious case surrounding a Mississippi death row convict.
