Aung San Suu Kyi has voiced support for Myanmar’s sentencing of two Reuters journalists to seven-year jail terms in her first public remarks since last week’s verdict, which caused an international furore.

“They were not jailed because they were journalists,” Myanmar’s de facto leader said at a World Economic Forum summit of Asean of political and business leaders in Hanoi, when asked whether she was comfortable with the notion of journalists being imprisoned. “They were jailed because sentence has been passed on them, because the court has decided they have broken the Official Secrets Act.” 

Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo, Reuters reporters, were found guilty last week by a Yangon court of breaking the colonial-era law while working on a story on Myanmar's violent military crackdown on Rohingya Muslims last year.