A Tokyo-based non-governmental organization, Human Rights Now, on Wednesday called on the Japanese government to take a stronger stance over the arrests of two Reuters journalists detained in Myanmar last week.
Japanese Foreign Minister Taro Kono on Tuesday said freedom of the press was vital and that Japan was closely monitoring the situation, but he did not call for the journalists’ release.
Human Rights Now Secretary-General Kazuko Ito told Reuters that Japan should send a stronger message about the arrests.
Ito said that by not joining in international calls for the journalists’ release, Japan might be sending a message that it was ok for the Myanmar government to violate human rights.
“Therefore, I would like (the government of Japan) to exercise care in its comments and clearly express a stance of standing together with those who are victims of human rights violations,” she told Reuters.
Japan typically shies away from outspoken public comments about human rights issues overseas, preferring to focus on quiet diplomacy. A spokesman for Abe’s office had no immediate comment on Ito’s remarks.
Japan had been “conducting dialogue” with Myanmar’s government on the human rights situation there in general, a spokesman for the prime minister’s office said on Friday.
Japan is one of Mynamar’s biggest foreign aid donors, where it vies for influence with China, Myanmar’s largest trading partner. Japan said last year it would provide aid worth $7 billion to Myanmar over five years.
Human Rights Now is a well-known group in Japan. It has a membership of over 700 individuals and organisations, including lawyers, with a presence in Tokyo and Osaka in Japan as well as New York, Geneva and Myanmar, its website says, and has had United Nations special consultative status since 2012.
The Reuters journalists were arrested after they were invited to dine with police officers on the evening of December12 on the outskirts of Myanmar’s largest city, Yangon.
They had worked on Reuters coverage of a crisis that has seen an estimated 655,000 Rohingya Muslims flee from a fierce military crackdown in the western state of Rakhine following attacks by militants.
There has been no word on where the two journalists are being held, as authorities investigate whether they violated the countries colonial-era Official Secrets Act, which carries a maximum prison sentence of 14 years.
A number of governments, including the United States, Canada and Britain, and United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, have criticised the arrests as an attack on press freedom and called on Myanmar to release the two men.
“The detention of journalists reporting on such critical matters to the public interest is an egregious attack on freedom of the press in Myanmar that will severely undermine the ability of journalists to conduct their legitimate work without fear of reprisal,” Human Rights Now said in a statement, in which it called for the journalists’ immediate release and the end to proceedings against them.
Tuesday, March 18, 2025
