Last week two jailed Reuters journalists were awarded a Pulitzer Prize for their reporting that exposed an ethnic cleansing campaign being waged against minority Rohingya community in Myanmar. However, on Tuesday, Myanmar’s top court rejected the appeal by Wa Lone and KyawSoeOo who were jailed for seven years in connection with their investigation into the massacre of Rohingya men and boys at Inn Din village, Rakhine State, in 2017. “The upholding of the conviction of Wa Lone and KyawSoe is a grave injustice,” said the Special Rapporteur on the Situation of Human Rights in Myanmar, Yanghee Lee, and the Special Rapporteur on freedom of expression, David Kaye. “This raises additional concerns about the independence of the judiciary, and the country’s commitment to international human rights standards,” they added, calling on the court to publish a full decision of its reasoning for rejecting the appeal. The case of Lee and Kaye sheds a light on the increasing curtailment of free expression and access to information in repressive states such as Myanmar, and a worrying intolerance of legitimate criticism of the military in such countries. “Wa Lone and KyawSoeOo did not commit a crime. They were doing their job as investigative journalists, reporting on issues of the upmost concern to the people of Myanmar, and serving in an essential democratic function,” the experts said.