Junta Increases Pressure on Media

By VIOLET CHO
The Irrawaddy News
www.irrawaddy.org

Burmese authorities appear to be allowing the Myanmar Nation to start publishing again—on condition it acts as a government mouthpiece.

Only two weeks after the Burmese military government closed the offices of the Myanmar Nation, the military authorities appear to be offering the publishers of the Rangoon-based weekly news journal the opportunity to start printing again, on condition that it toe the junta’s line and counter the exiled Burmese media.

According to a source close the Myanmar Nation, the government’s press scrutiny board director, Maj Tint Shwe, has been putting pressure on the Myanmar Nation’s publisher to restart operations by acting as a mouthpiece for the military regime and confronting exiled media groups which continuously expose the junta’s wrongdoings.

“The military government is pressuring Myat Soe, the Myanmar Nation publisher, to print a journal that counters the exiled Burmese media,” said the source. “Myat Soe would become editor in chief and his daughter would be appointed a member of the editorial board if he would agree to start publishing again under the government’s conditions.”

The authorities recently arrested former Myanmar Nation editor in chief Thet Zin and the office manager after a police raid on the journal’s office on February 15. During the raid, police seized footage of last year’s monk-led demonstrations and a copy of UN Special Rapporteur for Human Rights to Burma Paulo Sergio Pinheiro’s recent report. The authorities then ordered the journal to cease publishing.

The case against the two arrested men is still unclear, according to former employees of the Myanmar Nation, because the journal was only published after the approval of the military government’s censorship board. In the meantime, the journalists are being detained in Rangoon’s notorious Insein Prison.

Media right groups, including the Committee to Protect Journalists, have condemned the arrests and say that the government’s ongoing suppression of journalists makes a mockery of its recent announcement to hold a referendum and introduce seemingly democratic reforms in the country.

Burma was recently ranked as among the worst countries in the world for press freedom by Washington-based pro-democracy organization Freedom House.

According to journalists in Rangoon, the military authorities have banned reporters from covering a number of governmental meetings which, in the past, they were free to attend. The reporters, who were questioned intensively, were recently prohibited from attending meetings of the Myanmar Construction Entrepreneurs Association, the Myanmar Info-Tech Meeting, and the Myanmar Forest Products & Timber Merchants Association.

Authorities later rescinded the order, but enforced a strict registration of all reporters who wished to attend the meetings.

According to sources close to Burmese journalists working in Rangoon, a staff member at weekly journal The Voice is being forced to apologize to current Rangoon mayor Brig-Gen Aung Thein Lin for strongly challenging him during a recent press conference.

The press conference was reportedly called by the mayor himself. During the meeting, The Voice’s reporter contradicted statements the mayor had made about the recent crackdown on street vendors, which it is a hot issue in Rangoon at the movement. The question apparently infuriated the mayor and he threatened the journalist with imprisonment.