lonely-planet-myanmar-burma-11-edition

320In November 1999, the UN International Labour Organization took theunprecedented step of recommending sanctions against Myanmar, becauseof its use of civilians for forced labour and treacherous tasks of porteragefor the military (including serving as ‘human landmine detectors’).TESTING TIMES FOR THE MEDIAPOLITICS, ECONOMICS & SANCTIONS THE SANCTIONS DEBATEMedia censorship in Myanmar has been routine since the military takeover in 1962,giving locals years of practice of using gossip, short-wave radios, satellite-TV dishes andcomputers to find out what their government doesn’t want them to know. Local journalistshave also become braver at pressing the envelope of what is permitted. In early2011 the government signalled that censorship would be eased, with coverage of issues,including health, technology and entertainment, no longer requiring pre-publicationapproval by the Press Scrutiny and Registration Division (PSRD).The following is an overview of Myanmar’s main media outlets:PrintTo get a sense of what passes for news, thumb through the English version of the NewLight of Myanmar, which features generals’ visits to plants and monasteries on the frontpage and little else of interest inside. The English-language weekly The Myanmar Timesis a bit bolder, but just as friendly to the government; its former editor and co-owner,Australian Ross Dunkley was found guilty of assault and immigration offences in June2011, a verdict he is set to appeal.Neither of these papers is the only source of printed news for locals, who have accessto over 150 privately owned newspapers and magazines. Many news magazinesare weeklies because the current bureaucracy involved in submitting all articles to thePSRD makes daily publication practically impossible.Editors have not been averse to publishing stories they know will have consequences.Reporters Without Borders noted that following Aung San Suu Kyi’s release at least 10publications were suspended for periods of one to three weeks for according, in thewords of the government censor, ‘too much importance’ to the story. There’s concernthat the proposed shift to a more informal Chinese-style of censorship might causeeditors to become more cautious about publishing such news at all, as they will becomepersonally responsible for the articles.TV & RadioThere are three free-to-air TV channels (MRTV, Myawady TV and MRTV-3), but many localsprefer to get their news from overseas radio broadcasts by the BBC’s World Service, VOA(Voice of America) and RFA (Radio Free Asia; www.rfa.org) or from satellite-TV channelssuch as BBC World, CNN and Democratic Voice of Burma (DVB; www.dvb.no), whosebrave video journalists (VJs) risk imprisonment to film events in Myanmar and smugglethem out of the country. It’s believed that there are over 10 million daily viewers of DVB inMyanmar (we saw the channel screened in the lobby of one hotel on our research trip) andthe work of DVB’s VJs is covered in the Oscar-nominated documentary Burma VJ.InternetIn 2009 the Committee to Protect Journalists (www.cpj.org) ranked Myanmar asthe worst country in the world in which to be a blogger, citing, among others, the case ofMaung Thura, who is serving a 59-year prison term for circulating video footage after CycloneNargis in 2008. Internet cafes face strict operating rules, and many sites, includingthat of Lonely Planet, are blocked; see p 363 for details on how people get around this.Despite the dangers, the internet is an increasingly popular and important means ofnews and communication in Myanmar. One of the most fascinating events we attendedduring our research in the country was Barcamp Yangon (www.barcampyangon.org), auser-generated conference on all things related to IT and the internet. Over two days,some 4700 people of all ages attended the event, during which topics such as blogging,computer coding and security were openly discussed.