REPORTERS WITHOUT BORDERS GIVES MYANMAR MEDIA FREEDOM A BAD END OF YEAR REPORT CARD
December 27th 2007 23:06
Myanmar’s military government has constantly hounded local journalists during the three months that have gone by since September 27, the day that Japanese video reporter Kenji Nagai was shot dead by a soldier in Yangon, according to Reporters Without Borders and the Burma Media Association.
The police and army continue to hunt for journalists and activists who photographed and filmed the crackdown on the pro-democracy demonstrations, and at least nine have fled to Thailand.
Privately-owned media has resumed publishing but the Censorship Board has stepped up its control.
The UN Human Rights Council adopted a resolution on Myanmar on December 14 that calls on the government to guarantee the freedom of the independent media.
Ko Aung Gyi, the former editor of the sports magazine 90 Minutes, is one of the latest journalists to be detained, but it is not known why he was arrested in Yangon. Two other former journalists, Ko Win Maw and Ko Aung Aung, have also been arrested without being charged. At least 15 other journalists have been arrested since September and then released.
The six currently in prison include Win Tin, a prominent journalist held since July 1989.
People who have been arrested and then released say the police ask everyone for the names of the ‘cameramen,’ meaning the journalists who work clandestinely for foreign news media or Democratic Voice of Burma, an exile radio and TV station based in Oslo. Many photographers and cameramen who contributed to exile media have stopped working altogether for fear of being identified.
The weekly News Watch was banned for a week in mid-November after proposing the publication of photos that displeased the military, and military censors have forced editors to resign.
In early December, the authorities punished the magazine Action for failing to withdraw articles censored by the government. A censorship official publicly criticised Action for not being "constructive." The newspaper Middle Line also got into trouble. It was suspended after its editor, Oo Swe, complained that some media were getting favourable treatment from the censors.
To prevent Myanmar people from seeing reports and pictures of the crackdown in September, the military government has strictly controlled the sale of foreign publications since mid-October. The magazines Time and Newsweek and Thai newspapers have not been seen in news stands for the past few weeks. The internet has been restored but surveillance has been stepped up in internet cafés. For fear of reprisals, many internet cafe owners have removed the program from their computers that allowed users to circumvent the government's filters.
The censorship is not limited to political topics. The military government, for example, banned coverage of a new outbreak of bird flu on October 20, although the outbreak was announced by the government agency responsible for dealing with it.
- From MediaBlab
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