Page 1 of 2 Perception shift on Myanmar media
By Dan Waites
CHIANG MAI - Just over four years ago, a video journalist with exile-media
agency Democratic Voice of Burma (DVB) filmed a Myanmar soldier pushing
Japanese reporter Kenji Nagai to the ground before shooting him dead at
point-blank range. The clip, among hours of footage captured by DVB during the
anti-government uprising that became known as Myanmar's ''Saffron'' revolution,
was broadcast around the world. It spoke powerfully of the brutality of the
Myanmar regime, as well as the need for an independent media that could
scrutinize it from beyond its reach.
Today, Myanmar's exile media agencies - from the best-known outfits like DVB,
The Irrawaddy and Mizzima to the small agencies that serve Myanmar's ethnic
minorities - face severe
funding difficulties. A US$300,000 embezzlement scandal has tarnished DVB's
reputation and resulted in the departure of most of its undercover video
journalists, crucial to the organization's operations.
And a surprising and rapid expansion in press freedom conditions inside Myanmar
itself has prompted questions over the future of the exile media in general.
Will Myanmar's next revolution be televised - and if so, by whom?
When President Thein Sein made an unprecedented call in his March 30 inaugural
address for the role of the media as the ''fourth estate'' to be respected,
Myanmar watchers could have been forgiven for cynicism. The former general was
speaking in a country, also known as Burma, renowned for having one of the most
restricted and censored media environments in the world.
As Thein Sein spoke, around 25 journalists were locked up in Myanmar jails, a
small proportion of the some 2,000 political prisoners whose presence in the
country could not be acknowledged in print. The regime completely dominated the
local broadcast media, filling the airwaves with pro-military propaganda.
And yet Thein Sein's words have not proved to be completely empty. Change has
come, and at a pace that has surprised many analysts. The Burmese regime's
risible mouthpiece, The New Light of Myanmar, has dropped slogans accusing the
BBC, Voice of America and Radio Free Asia - which beam Burmese-language radio
programs into the country - of constituting a ''sky full of liars attempting to
destroy [the] nation". The websites of the DVB and The Irrawaddy have,
following years of censorship, been unblocked - though less than 1% of
Myanmar's citizens have access to the Internet.
In Naypyidaw, foreign and local reporters have been allowed - with restrictions
- to cover parliamentary proceedings. And officials, previously answerable to
no one but their superiors, have made themselves more available to the media in
recent months. In mid-October, Deputy Labor Minister Myint Thein gave an
interview to a DVB reporter on the subject of Myanmar migrants in Thailand. It
was the first time a minister had given an interview to an organization that
just months earlier the regime was denouncing as "killer media" bent on
"generating public outrage."
Perhaps most significant have been changes at the government's infamous censor
board, the Press Scrutiny and Registration Division (PSRD). In June, the
government announced that publishers would be allowed to print stories on
sports, entertainment, technology, health and children's literature without
PSRD approval.
And the censors are now applying a lighter touch to scrutiny of the country's
350 weekly and monthly news journals, allowing a range of topics to see the
light of day that would formerly have been chopped, including interviews with
exile-media editors, opposition politicians, dissidents and human-rights
activists. Images of pro-democracy icon Aung San Suu Kyi, too, are now
permitted.
"The relaxation of censorship has been significant and occurred faster than I
think anyone in the industry expected," one Yangon-based editor, asking to
remain anonymous, told Asia Times Online by e-mail. "Journalists now have more
scope to criticize or quote people criticizing both the government and private
sector. They are able to cover issues that were previously considered too
sensitive, such as political prisoners. There is also a lot more advocacy -
calling on the government to do this or that, which I think is also positive."
The social and economic conditions of the country, too, are increasingly fair
game. "You can say how poor the Burmese people are now," said Toe Zaw Latt,
Chiang Mai bureau chief for DVB. "They were never poor before."
While most analysts welcome the changes, some point out that decades of
censorship have left many Myanmar-based journalists under skilled and
unaccustomed to exercising press freedom. "The government has said that
journalists need to take more responsibility for what they are writing if
censorship is to be removed but the majority of those in the industry have no
formal training," the editor pointed out.
"There is little understanding of issues such as contempt and defamation and in
some cases adherence to accepted journalism conventions, such as attribution of
sources, is poor."
Khin Maung Nyo, a Yangon-based freelancer with almost 20 years' journalism
experience, said that in times past editors could rest easy knowing the censors
were responsible for excising controversial material. Now, they are must take
the tough decisions familiar to editors everywhere, knowing that officials will
hold them responsible for what they print. "It's much more stressful now," he
said. "We're talking about the relationships between tycoons and the
government, about drugs and arms dealing. A year ago we couldn't do that."
The changing press environment, combined with developments in other spheres,
has led some observers to conclude real change is afoot in Myanmar. In August,
Thein Sein met Suu Kyi in Naypyidaw. That meeting led Suu Kyi to tell
supporters there was an "opportunity for change", according to a report in this
newspaper.
The following month, Thein Sein appeared to make a rare concession to public
opinion in suspending the multi-billion dollar Myitsone Dam project following a
campaign by environmental activists and local media. In October, a mass
prisoner amnesty saw the release of around 200 political prisoners, with at
least three journalists among them. Further releases are believed to be in the
pipeline.
Mixed messages
But while many analysts, diplomats and international nongovernmental
organizations have been seduced by the new president's reform program, other
observers remain wary. They question the intentions of a man who rose to the
highest echelons of a military that ruled Myanmar with an iron fist for almost
half a century.
Others point to a still unresolved battle within the regime between supposedly
reform-minded ministers such as the president and House Speaker Shwe Mann and
more hard-line elements led by Vice President Tin Aung Myint Oo as grounds for
caution.
Bracketed by many in that hardline stable is Minister of Information Kyaw Hsan,
the man responsible for Myanmar's media environment. Press freedom would bring
"more disadvantages than advantages," Kyaw Hsan recently told the Lower House
in Naypyidaw in a speech in which he likened the media to dangerous "red ants"
that could bite Myanmar if allowed to run riot.
At the same time, 14 DVB journalists remain in prison, including 27-year-old
Hla Hla Win, sentenced to 27 years in jail in 2009 after being caught
interviewing monks for a story. In September, 21-year-old Sithu Zeya had his
eight-year jail sentence extended by a decade under the vague and often-abused
Electronics Act. "That's why we are very cynical about the 'changes' for the
media," said Toe Zaw Latt.
And many issues crucial to the debate over the new democratic Myanmar that is
supposedly emerging remain off limits for media inside the country. In
particular, the controversial 2008 constitution, pushed through in a referendum
held in the devastating aftermath of Cyclone Nargis, is beyond criticism. Yet
this is the charter that provided a blanket amnesty to all members of the
previous, murderous ruling junta and that enshrines the military-dominated
National Defense and Security Council with executive power above that of the
president.
Conflict in the country's outlying ethnic minority states, a fight that has
largely defined the previous 60 years of Myanmar's history, is still scarcely
acknowledged in the local press. On June 9, the Myanmar Army launched an
offensive against the Kachin Independence Army (KIA), breaking a ceasefire that
had lasted 17 years.
Driving the conflict was the KIA's refusal to transform itself into a Border
Guard Force, as demanded by the military's roadmap to democracy, as well as the
KIA's control of strategic areas in Kachin State slated for Chinese funded
hydropower projects.
The exile media, led by the Kachin News Group and the Shan Herald Agency for
News, have reported horrific abuses perpetrated by the Myanmar Army in Kachin
State and northern Shan State since the conflict began. In just one recent
case, KNG reported the kidnap and gang rape by "dozens" of Myanmar soldiers of
a 28-year-old Kachin woman near the Chinese border.
Kachin Women's Association Thailand, a rights group, documents many more such
cases in its October report "Burma's Cover-Up War: Atrocities Against The
Kachin People". For the Myanmar military, rape remains a weapon of war in the
new democratic era.
Yet the conflict remains off-limits for media based inside the country. Naw
Din, editor of Kachin News Group, said Yangon-based reporters have been
forbidden by government authorities from travelling to the conflict zone. He
argues that the international community has been duped into taking its eyes off
what is happening in Kachin State by focusing on happenings in Yangon and
Naypyidaw.
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