GOVERNMENT ORDERS MYANMAR TIMES TO FIRE FOUR OF ITS EDITORIAL STAFF
January 16th 2008 08:01
The Myanmar Times has been ordered to suspend publication for one week and sack four of its Myanmar-edition editors after carrying a report that had not been authorised by the government’s censorship board.
According to the Irrawaddy Journal, the report in the current issue told readers that satellite TV fees were to be increased from the equivalent of US $5 annually to $800.
The news provoked wide public criticism. The government appears to be having second thoughts about introducing the rise and has not yet implemented it (see MediaBlab archives.)
According to the Irrawaddy Journal, “the four Myanmar Times employees ordered to be sacked were named as news chief Win Kyaw Oo and editors Nwe Nwe Aye, Win Nyunt Lwin and Myint Soe.”
Nwe Nwe Aye, for example, has been with the Myanmar Times almost since its beginnings in 2000. She worked for several years as a reporter on the paper’s English-language edition, covering mainly health and women’s issues.
She is one of the few journalists to have travelled extensively as part of her job, having flown to Japan and Australia, and most recently Germany.
Recently she was promoted to deputy editor along with Win Nyunt Lwin. Win Kyaw Oo was chief of staff, and Myint Soe was chief sub-editor.
The order suspending The Myanmar Times for one week comes amid signs that the regime is clamping down still further on the Myanmar media. Information Minister Brig-Gen Kyaw Hsan – dubbed ‘Comical Ali’ by the Thai daily newspaper The Nation in a reference to former Iraqi information minister Mohammed Saeed al-Sahhaf – warned editors, writers and publishers that the censorship board would “take action” if they wrote “news which can discourage the national interest.”
Kyaw Hsan, right hand man of junta leader Senior General Than Shwe, is described as one of four ‘super hard-liners,’ along with Culture Minister Major General Aung Khin Myint, Industry Minister-1 Aung Thaung and Minister of Science and Technology Maung Thaung.
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