Attacks on the Press in 2010 - Committee to Protect Journalists

<strong>Attacks</strong> on the Press in 2010the 2008 Cyclone Nargis disaster. The documentary, titled “Orphans ofBurma’s Cyclone,” was later recognized with a Rory Peck Award for bestdocumentary. DVB had previously referred to Ngwe Soe Lin only as “T” inan attempt to conceal from authorities his identity as an undercover DVBreporter.His conviction followed a 27-year jail term handed down on December30, 2009, to DVB reporter Hla Hla Win, who was similarly charged underthe Electronics Act. She was first arrested on September 11, 2009, on herway back from a DVB reporting assignment in Pakokku Township in centralBurma, where she had conducted interviews with Buddhist monks fora report on the second anniversary of the 2007 uprising.On April 15, authorities arrested DVB reporter Sithu Zeya while he wasfilming the aftermath of a bomb explosion that killed nine and injured 170in the old capital, Rangoon, during a Buddhist New Year celebration. DVBsaid the 21-year-old reporter was tortured while in police custody and,under duress, confessed that his father, Maung Maung Zeya, also workedsecretly as a DVB reporter. Maung Maung Zeya was arrested two days laterin his Rangoon home. The father-son reporting team was charged underthe Unlawful Associations, Immigration, and Electronic acts and awaited acourt verdict in late year.On October 13, Nyi Nyi Tun, editor of the local-language news publicationKandarawaddy, was sentenced to 13 years in prison for “crimesagainst the state.” He was convicted of violating the Unlawful Associations,Immigration (Emergency Provisions), and Wireless Telegraphy acts,as well as other laws, according to Mizzima, a Burmese exile-run newsagency based in New Delhi. After his arrest in October 2009, authoritiesshut down his news journal, which operated in the country’s Kayah specialregion.The government held nearly 2,200 political prisoners throughout theyear, according to the Assistance Association for Political Prisoners inBurma, a Thailand-based monitoring organization.Cyber-attacks were launched on September 27 against three exilerunBurma news outlets—Irrawaddy, Mizzima News, and DVB—raisingquestions of government involvement. The distributed denial-of-service(DDOS) attacks shut down Irrawaddy’s main website and temporarilyblocked access to Mizzima’s sites by overwhelming their servers withartificially created attempts to access their sites. Irrawaddy said in astatement that the attacks were more severe than those that forced its siteto shut down for three days in 2008. Mizzima Editor-in-Chief Soe Myinttold CPJ that most of the DDOS traffic appeared to have originated fromtwo sites that his technical staff said were based in India.138