Two Burmese journalists for Reuters were honoured in absentia with the PEN America 2018 Barbey Freedom to Write Award on Tuesday in New York, as they remain behind bars more than 8,000 kilometres away, facing charges for what the international news agency says was “simply doing their jobs.”

Campaign group Amnesty International said on Tuesday it had gathered evidence that insurgents from a Rohingya Muslim armed group killed scores of Hindu civilians in August last year, amid a surge in violence in western Burma.

The relatives of 10 Rohingya men massacred in the Rakhine State village of Inn Din did not learn of the killings for many months — in some cases, not until Reuters reporters tracked them down in the refugee camps and told them what had happened. This is their story

UN human rights experts investigating a possible genocide in Burma said on Monday that Facebook had played a role in spreading hate speech there.

A Reuters investigation into the killing of Rohingya Muslims in Burma prompted demands from the US State Department for a credible investigation into the bloodshed there and calls for the release of two journalists who were arrested while working on the report.

Thousands of Buddhist monks gathered in Mandalay on Sunday for an event partly organised by a scandal-hit Thai temple whose abbot is wanted for questioning on money-laundering allegations.