Myanmar charges Reuters reporters under Official Secrets Act

YANGON, Jan 10 (AFP): Two Reuters journalists were formally charged by police in a Myanmar court Wednesday with breaching a colonial-era secrecy law that carries up to 14 years in jail, provoking a barrage of calls for their immediate release.

Myanmar nationals Wa Lone, 31, and Kyaw Soe Oo, 27, were arrested a month ago under the Official Secrets Act after they were allegedly given classified documents by two policemen over dinner.

The pair had been reporting on the military campaign in the northern state of Rakhine that has forced some 655,000 Rohingya Muslims to flee over the border to Bangladesh since August.

The UN and US have condemned the violence as ethnic cleansing.

The issue is incendiary inside Myanmar, where authorities deny wrongdoing and say the army was cracking down on militants from the Muslim minority.

The pair will return to court on January 23 for legal arguments, when the bench will decide whether to accept the case under Myanmar's arcane legal system.