The defence has the option of making a further appeal to the country’s supreme court, based in the capital Naypyitaw.
A court found the two Reuters reporters guilty on Monday last week and jailed them for seven years in a landmark case seen as a test of progress towards democracy in the Southeast Asian country.
The journalists were found guilty on official secrets charges and sentenced earlier this month in a landmark case seen as a test of progress toward democracy in Myanmar.
Wa Lone, 32, and Kyaw Soe Oo, 28, were investigating the killing by security forces of Rohingya villagers at the time of their arrest last December, and had pleaded not guilty.
On 20 April, a prosecution witness revealed in pre-trial hearings that police planted military documents on Reuters reporters Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo in order to frame them.
Press freedom advocates, the United Nations, the European Union and countries including the United States, Canada and Australia have called for the Reuters journalists’ acquittal.
Wa Lone, 32, and Kyaw Soe Oo, 28, are charged with breaching the Official Secrets Act, which carries a maximum sentence of 14 years in prison.
The 28-year-old reporter and his colleague Wa Lone, 32, face charges brought under the colonial-era Official Secrets Act, in a case seen as a test of press freedom in Myanmar.
Children make up around half of the more than 700,000 Rohingya Muslims who have fled Buddhist-majority Myanmar to neighbouring Bangladesh since the start of a military crackdown last August.
The killings took place during a military crackdown that United Nations agencies say led to more than 700,000 Rohingya fleeing to neighbouring Bangladesh last year.
Yangon district judge Ye Lwin charged reporters Wa Lone, 32, and Kyaw Soe Oo, 28, with breaching the colonial-era Official Secrets Act, which carries a maximum penalty of 14 years in prison.
The pre-trial hearings, which began in January, finished last month. The two reporters have been denied bail and have been held in Yangon’s Insein jail since being arrested in December.
The police major conducted the inquiry after the journalists were arrested on 12 December. They have now spent six months in detention.
The reporters have told relatives they were arrested almost immediately after being handed some rolled up papers at a restaurant in northern Yangon by two policemen.
At the time of their arrest in December, the reporters had been working on an investigation into the killing of 10 Rohingya Muslim men and boys in a village in western Myanmar’s Rakhine state.
Later on Wednesday Mark Field, a junior British foreign minister, called again on authorities in Myanmar to halt a “gross perversion” of press freedom.
The court in Yangon has been holding hearings since January to decide whether the pair will be charged under the colonial-era Official Secrets Act.
The reporters were detained on 12 December after they had been invited to meet police officers over dinner in Yangon.
