Two journalists arrested in 2017 walked out of the heavily reinforced prison gates Tuesday morning following an International uproar.
The two Reuters journalists were arrested and incarcerated over what the Myanmar government called “possessing state secrets.”
The two, Wa Lone, 33, and Kyaw Soe Oo, 29, had reported on the Myanmar government’s ethnic cleansing of the Rohingya Muslims where scores are believed to have been killed.
Myanmar government arrested the two in December, 2017 and reportedly trumped-up charge would lead to their sentencing to serve seven years in prison.
An expose by Reuters revealed the Myanmar government had engaged in a targeted slaughter of the Rohingya Muslims in the Asian country’s Rakhine State in the West.
Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo had a terrible day when the Supreme Court quashed a petition to free the two, thereby upholding their sentences in late April.
They were to later receive the Pulitzer Award for International Reporting and also grace the coveted Time Person of the Year of 2019.
However, a decision by the Myanmar President, Win Myint, led to the release of the two journalists who had spent 500 days at the Yangon prison.