Abstract
The media in Burma is greeting the retreat from censorship with suspicion. Sports journalist and former political prisoner
An eminent satirist whose send-ups have antagonised the Burmese authorities for the past 20 years is fuming under the Rangoon sun. His piece mocking the mismanagement of the Ministry of Communications, Posts and Telegraphs has been banned. ‘The notion of Burmese media’s Arab spring is total bollocks. The dawn of freedom of the press, huh? Our writings are still in the grip of the Dark Ages!’
He is not joking. As freedom of the press is still under threat, the recent thaw on media censorship in Burma has had a mixed response. Despite rumours that the Press Scrutiny and Registration Division will cease to exist when a law on printing and television is passed by parliament in June, local editors continue to complain about the restrictions they face on a daily basis.
Last June, information minister Kyaw Hsan announced the removal of censorship for publications in five areas: arts, technology, health, sports and children’s literature. Economy and law were added to the list in December, followed by education this month.
News and religion are the only two areas that still have to go through the press scrutiny board. Out of 212 weekly journals and 189 monthly magazines published in the country today, 73 journals and 65 magazines still have to have their contents screened and approved by the board.
Zaw Thet Htway after he was released from prison, 13 January 2012, Rangoon
Credit: Khin Maung Win/AP/PA
In February, a reporter from Modern Journal was sued by the authorities in Thapeikkyin Township in Mandalay Division for publishing an article about the condition of dilapidated roads in the area. In March, the Ministry of Mines threatened the Voice with a lawsuit after the weekly disclosed that several government ministries, including the Ministry of Mines, did not come clean in the auditor general’s annual report. Such intolerance of the press undermines the government’s rhetoric about building a modern democratic nation and casts doubt on their commitment to reform.
Minister Kyaw Hsan, formerly a brigadier-general, may be no different from his predecessors in telling journalists how to do their job. In his words, we should ‘follow journalistic ethics such as impartiality, describing a subject from various angles, not from one single angle, in order that the people can review and decide correctly, exercising freedom and accountability and freedom and rationality, ensuring unity in democracy and upholding the national cause in exercising unity in democracy’.
Setting down rules is never going to be popular with the media. Senior journalists who were trained in Burma’s post-war parliamentary era shrug off these rules, saying that a media law is not really necessary for professional columnists.
Since President Thein Sein highlighted civil society’s role in democratic transition and encouraged the formation of civic groups in his annual speech in March, many government-organised NGOs have been rolled back. The Myanmar Film Association was the first to become independent with a new organisational structure voted in by film professionals. Other pro-government associations are likely to follow suit.
When the Myanmar Writers and Journalists Association was dissolved on 24 March at an emergency meeting of the Ministry of Information, three new associations were created, for writers, journalists and publishers. The formation of fully independent media associations has not, however, been encouraged – the information minister has made it clear that he would like to see an umbrella organisation for all media groups, a Press Council modelled after similar councils in neighbouring countries.
In response, poets, journalists and writers who would rather stand on their own identities and principles have unionised. Myanmar Poets Union chaired by Maung Seine Ni, Myanmar Journalists Union, chaired by Daw Aye Aye Win of Associated Press, and Myanmar Writers Union, chaired by Htat Myat, have been formed as bottom-up initiatives.
Whatever the future holds, the unions are committed to the lifeline of the fourth estate: freedom of the press. They will certainly be watching over the development of top-down media associations and the government’s media law.
Translated by Ko Ko Thett