Myanmar media still under siege
Although Myanmar's quasi-civilian government has ended"direct press censorship", it's not yet time for celebration.
Full media freedom is not anywhere in sight, says ANINDYA RAI VERMAN
For outside observers, the recent “baby steps” that Myanmar has taken toward “media reforms” may seem to be in keeping with perhaps the most sweeping political changes the former British colony has seen in the recent past, since the 1962 military coup. A government, stacked with former generals, has allowed, among other changes, landmark elections, eased a few rules on protests and freed some dissidents: changes prompting even the European Union and the United States to recently lift a complex web of trade embargos and other sanctions meant to punish the ruthless former military rulers for decades of misrule and alleged human rights abuse. Possibly reflecting the “sweeping changes”, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh travelled to Naypyidaw in May this year in what was the first visit by an Indian prime minister to Myanmar in 25 years.
Only last month, the quasi-civilian government of President Thein Sein, who took over from the military junta in March 2011, abolished ‘direct media censorship’. Accordingly, in principle at least, journalists are no longer required to submit reports to state censors before publication, a practice that had been strictly enforced over half a century of military rule. The censorship, however, was not limited to just news reports. Every a song, cartoon, book, or a planned piece of art required prior approval by teams of censors mandated to root out political messages and criticisms from such material.
In a gradual but cautious approach since June last year, the Ministry of Information decided to allow a number of Myanmar's private weekly journals and monthly magazines to publish without turning over “page proofs” in advance to a censor board, according to the Media Programme Asia of the Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung, a political foundation “closely associated with the Christian Democratic Union of Germany”. Myanmar has nearly 200 private weeklies and four state-owned dailies peddling government propaganda, as per a recent Reuters report. Some publications have been cautiously testing the waters, sometimes putting Opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi on their front covers and even giving coverage to government critics. Some journalists say this was unthinkable even till early last year.
Last month in a major Cabinet reshuffle nine ministers were assigned new posts. In a key change, Minister of Labour and Social Welfare, Relief and Resettlement U Aung Kyi was named Information Minister, replacing U Kyaw Hsan, viewed by many as a hardliner, who was made Minister of Cooperatives. Following the Cabinet reshuffle, the government published a detailed list of 2,082 of the 6,165 people who have been removed from lack-lists in line with the ongoing “reform policy”. Of the 2,082 people, 935 are Myanmar dissidents residing at home and abroad including media persons and those from organisations in exile who opposed the previous military government, while 1,147 are foreigners.
However, despite the official end of “direct media censorship” last month, The Independent quoted Zaw Thet Htwe, a spokesperson for the Committee for Freedom of the Press, as telling the Irrawaddy magazine that, though it was a “real improvement”, the “fourth pillar” can enjoy full press freedom only when the repressive 2004 Electronics Act as well as the draconian 1962 Printers and Publishers Registration Act are abolished.
Despite apparent government moves at efforts to “let-go”, there is deep-rooted suspicion among critics and observers, precisely due to the manner in which the government has gone about the “opening up” process. In January last year when the military government authorised an internet connection for Suu Kyi two months after she was freed following seven years of continuous house arrest, the process itself betrayed the reason why such suspicion is uppermost in the minds of many observers. A news agency had revealed how Suu Kyi, who had no telephone access during her house arrest, had first applied in her own name to a private company for internet access soon after she was released, but the request was transferred to a firm run by the country’s military authorities. Nonetheless, Suu Kyi said that she would use internet and social networking to contact young people and her network of supporters. However, online dissidents still seem to face the prospect of prison terms, and a thriving black market caters to those operating under assumed identities. According to statistics from the United Nations International Telecommunication Union, just one in every 455 people in Myanmar was an internet user in 2009.
This March, a video of Suu Kyi’s first campaign speech for Burmese state TV on behalf of her National League for Democracy (NLD) was leaked online and posted on Facebook, YouTube, and other websites, two days before the official release of the tape, clearly outlining how the internet has helped online activists bypass official censorship and convey the key messages of Burma’s pro-democracy movement to a worldwide audience.
Compare this development with the scenario last year, when, according to the Media Programme Asia, Myanmar had “110,000 Internet users and no Facebook subscribers as of March 2011”, and was ranked 169 out of 178 countries on the Reporters Without Borders press freedom index 2011.
Status quo
In the circumstances, the election commission censored a paragraph of the text of Suu Kyi's speech, submitted in advance, as it was construed as “harming the military’s image”. Suu Kyi still managed to criticise the “status quo” in her televised address recorded in a studio with a large NLD flag on a wall behind her and a smaller NLD flag on the desk where she sat speaking directly into the camera. She demanded, among other things, doing away with repressive laws, full media freedom, and an independent judicial system. The NLD had boycotted the November 7, 2010 general elections, the first in 20 years, and the junta’s proxy party, the Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP), swept the polls by defeating a breakaway faction of NLD which had been de-registered and then outlawed after it refused to register for the polls to protest the election laws that required that Suu Kyi be dropped as a member if the NLD had to contest the polls. In April this year, the NLD, which had boycotted the 2010 polls, contested a by-election and managed to win 43 of 45 seats, a historic victory seen internationally as further opening the doors for political reforms in the country.
However, what has really complicated matters is a decades-old “internal issue” which has had international ramifications and which assumed dangerous proportions in the past few months. Both the quasi-civilian government and Suu Kyi, hailed worldwide for her democratic credentials, have been accused by many observers and the West of being silent over the atrocities allegedly perpetrated over the years by the majority Buddhists against the minority Rohingya Muslims--considered illegal immigrants from Bangladesh and hence not recognised as Myanmar citizens--who have been fleeing “persecution” inside Myanmar and seeking asylum in neighbouring countries, including India.
The United Nations describes the Rohingyas as among the “world’s most persecuted people”. According to a conservative estimate, Bangladesh is currently home to about 30,000 Rohingyas, and over the years, at least 8,000 Rohingyas have made their way to India. Earlier this year, India granted them long-term stay visas, ensuring some degree of safety for them, but giving a chance to Opposition leaders, especially from the north-east, to aggressively raise the issue and corner the Congress-led UPA government.
Although inter-ethnic tensions have long simmered between the estimated 800,000 Rohingyas and their Arakanese Buddhist neighbours, especially in western Myanmar, things came to a head in early June following a spate of tit-for-tat killings initially sparked by allegations that a gang of Rohingya men had raped an Arakanese woman. Ten Rohingya people were slaughtered in response, sparking days of riots, even as Myanmar security forces were accused by critics of having actively encouraged and turned a blind eye to the spiraling violence. Journalists who recently visited the region say the Rohingyas have suffered mind-numbing violence and deaths, with thousands living in appalling conditions after being forced out of their homes.
Suu Kyi’s silence
Although human rights groups have expressed dismay at Suu Kyi’s “silence” and “reluctance” to take a clear position on the Rohingyas, it has been pointed out that Suu Kyi perhaps fears risking alienating many of her political allies vehemently opposed to a “deeply unpopular cause”. A cause which has, paradoxically, found both the quasi-civilian Myanmar government and Suu Kyi, despite her credentials as an intrepid champion of human rights, on the same page. Maung Zarni, an expert on Myanmar affairs and a visiting fellow at the London School of Economics, has a slightly different take and was quoted by The Independent as telling the Associated Press that Suu Kyi’s “silence” is typical of the “politician” that she has now become (“she is no longer a political dissident trying to stick to her principles”), with her eyes fixed on the “prize which is the 2015 majority Buddhist vote”.
If the mind-numbing bloodshed has made human rights activists and the West topoint to the atrocities in Myanmar, much of the recent backlash seems to have been triggered by hateful messages in online media forums in Myanmar, mostly targeting the Rohingya Muslims. In June, the New York Times reported how online messages used various expletives to describe them, urging the government to “make them disappear” and even expressing outrage at the United Nations and the West for highlighting the “plight” of the Rohingyas. When the Facebook page of the Eleven Media Group, one of the largest private media organisations in Myanmar, announced that a “Rohingya’s body” had been found, a reader wrote to say that he had been “waiting for this kind of news for a long time.”
The New York Times quoted the president of advocacy group, Burma Media Association, U Maung Myint, as saying that Thein Sein’s government recently ordered that all Rakhine-related (formerly Arakan State) news should go through the censor board, a move that immediately reeked of the oppressive, regressive, and authoritarian procedures adopted during the military rule. It was the “worst moment for media since the ‘civilian’ government assumed power”, Myint told NYT. The Myanmar government also banned Hlyat Ta Pyet, a popular publication, for an indefinite period for publishing what the government construed was an “inflammatory coverage” of the violence in Rakhine, Myint said.
It is in the backdrop of this extremely charged and polarised realm that the announcement this month by Myanmar’s Deputy Information Minister Ye Htut should be viewed. In what would certainly test the government’s seriousness in pushing media reforms, Htut said that new Information Minister Aung Kyi may allow private daily newspapers by early next year, and wants to introduce a new media law soon and set up a Press Council “acceptable to all”. What shape would the new media law take and would it be “acceptable to all”, including critics, journalists, editors, and media freedom advocacy groups? When the private daily newspapers do hit the market, will they be allowed to function absolutely independent of government control and strictures? Will they be free enough to air opinions at variance with positions held by the government, especially on such key and sensitive issues as the Rohingya Muslims? International observers, journalists, and all right-thinking people worldwide will certainly keep an eye on how the media scenario in Myanmar unfolds further.
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