Myanmar soldiers shoot dead 2 journalists in raid on home

Bangkok, August 23, 2024—The Committee to Protect Journalists calls on Myanmar authorities to immediately and credibly investigate Wednesday’s killing of journalists Win Htut Oo and Htet Myat Thu in a military raid on a home in southern Mon State.

“The killing of journalists Win Htut Oo and Htet Myat Thu is an atrocity against the free press and must not go unpunished,” said Shawn Crispin, CPJ’s senior Southeast Asia representative. “Myanmar authorities must ensure swift and full justice for the country’s independent journalists who are being killed simply for reporting the news.”

The bodies of Win Htut Oo, a journalist with the media group Democratic Voice of Burma (DVB), and Htet Myat Thu, a freelance reporter with the local Than Lwin Times outlet, were cremated without being returned to their families, according to a U.S. Congress-funded Radio Free Asia report.

Two other people were killed in the August 21 raid in Kyaikto Township. One was a member of the local Kyaikto Revolutionary Force, one of several armed groups resisting the military government, which took power in a 2021 coup.

Myanmar’s Ministry of Information did not respond to CPJ’s emailed request for comment.

Myanmar ranked 9th on CPJ’s latest Global Impunity Index, an annual ranking of countries where the killers of journalists habitually get away with murder. The nation also was the world’s second-worst jailer of journalists, with 43 behind bars in CPJ’s 2023 prison census.