CENSORSHIP MADNESS IN MYANMAR
October 11th 2007 00:34
AN EYEWITNESS ACCOUNT OF HOW CENSORHIP WORKS IN BURMA
I originally wrote this article for The Australian's Media section and it was published last week
THE fundamental rule for survival in my time as a journalist trainer at the Australian-run The Myanmar Times in Burma was keep your head down and if the Government says don't do it, don't do it.
Infractions are dealt with swiftly and severely, although in normal circumstances the military doesn't shoot journalists, just gives them a brief stretch of three to seven years prison for run-of-the-mill errors in reporting judgment.
The tragic shooting of Japanese photojournalist Kenji Nagai of the Tokyo-based APF media company was well out of the ordinary, even for Burma. But then again, the times are out of the ordinary.
While not diminishing his courage, he was also rather foolhardy because a seasoned foreign journalist in Burma knows that when trouble occurs on the street, stay low, stay at a distance, or stay away and acquire witness reports from locals later.
Being arrested at trouble spots will be swift and unpleasant, and in this case a bullet through the heart was the outcome.
But for the working Burmese journalist, time in the can is part of the job description. Most senior journalists have served prison sentences and are rather matter-of-fact about it. If you ask an older journalist if they've done a spell in the notorious Insein prison (appropriately pronounced insane prison) they usually respond, "Yes, of course."
Censorship of what is published internally is far more rigid than measures applied to reports that appear out of country, which leads to the maxim among most experienced media people that if you want to find out what's going on in Burma, it's best to leave Burma.
While the Burmese authorities are just about able to cope with straight-down-the-line news reportage of accepted topics, such as the price of pulses at the vegetable market, analysis or non-propagandist opinion pieces are anathema to them.
While working for The Myanmar Times when the Iraq war began, the instant call from the censors was "No analysis".
Censorship in Burma is of course all-encompassing, not only politically but also culturally. For example, on The Myanmar Times, Westernised social pages photographs of Burmese women wearing spaghetti-strap shoulder-revealing dresses, or photos showing them drinking or smoking, are verboten, yet the same restrictions do not apply to pictorial representations of women from the West or other Asian countries.
Former Australian ambassador to Burma, Trevor Wilson, was reported by this paper and other media outlets in recent days advising that however unpalatable the junta may be, they need to be engaged, if progress is to be made.
I saw the veracity of this viewpoint while working at The Myanmar Times: change, albeit minimal, yet incremental, can be achieved through engagement and negotiation.
The Myanmar Times has claimed victories such as reversing the Government's refusal to give coverage to the AIDS problem, through dogged and persistent persuasive arguments over a lengthy time.
On a more trivial basis, I had first-hand experience of an ability to negotiate through engagement when one of my journalism trainees had written a lifestyle piece about the fad for US-style break dancing among local university students.
The feature was accepted for publication by the Times' entertainment editor, but given a firm thumbs-down by the censor at Military Intelligence.
A dialogue was entered into. The question was asked about why this story was censored. The reply was that the Government wanted to promote only traditional Burmese dancing, not modern American dancing.
Next question to the censor was, "Is there any way this story can be saved?"
The reply was yes, provided break dancing was not referred to as dancing but as an American form of fitness exercise.
But while censorship can to a small degree be negotiable, any disobedience of rulings almost inevitably means jail for someone at the office, and repeat performances will see a publication shut down.
My Burmese boss, U Myat Sonny Swe, deputy chief executive of The Myanmar Times, was jailed for 14 years for bypassing official censorship.
But his jailing was a sort of retrospective technical political set-up because the paper had actually been rigidly censored by an office overseen by his father, Brigadier General Thein Swe, head of OSS, an elite division within Military Intelligence.
Up until late 2004 a pragmatic modernist regime led by prime minister Khin Nyunt was slowly opening the country up, and a more modern media was a large part of this thrust.
That faction encouraged the launch of The Myanmar Times, which is run and part-owned by Australian Walkley award-winning journalist Ross Dunkley and part-financed by members of the influential Clough family of Perth.
It also encouraged the establishment of a user-friendly, non-government-run internet provider owned by the prime minister's son, and trendy internet cafes in hip coffee houses such as Aromas, also owned by the prime minister's son (also jailed).
The Myanmar generals are as cruel and vicious to each other as they are to ordinary people, and during my time there one senior military official ended up with a bullet hole in his head during a volatile meeting in the war room.
On October 20, 2004 the hardliners, headed by Senior General Than Shwe (Shwe means gold) took back total control of Burma again, arrested the prime minister, declared Military Intelligence an illegal organisation and shut it down, jailed the upper echelon, took control of the internet and ramped up censorship at The Myanmar Times.
Those events led to the rapid economic decline that prompted the current insurrection.
Sonny Swe's father was sentenced to about 132 years and because his office was deemed an illegal organisation it was deemed that the censorship the group provided was also illegal, and The Myanmar Times' deputy CEO was retrospectively guilty of bypassing official censorship and jailed.
Day-to-day life in Burma is rife with such life or freedom-threatening legal technicalities, and overnight reversals, especially in media circles. It keeps players on their toes.
The right thing today can be the wrong thing tomorrow, with a 10-year ticket to Insein prison as the pay-off.
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