The dangers of reporting Myanmar's cyclone in a country where journalists are not welcome

BANGKOK, Thailand (AP-IHT): "I can't talk now, I think I'm in danger," a reporter in Myanmar whispered into the phone. Click.

Phones are tapped and the few foreign journalists inside Myanmar are operating in secret, making it dangerous and difficult to tell the story of the cyclone that has devastated the Southeast Asian country.

Covering catastrophes always carries risk in impoverished countries where disasters can cause shortages of food, clean water, outbreaks of disease and staggering death tolls. But the challenges are multiplied in Myanmar, formerly known as Burma, where the reclusive and notoriously brutal military regime does not want details of the suffering to leak out.

"This government is very paranoid, very xenophobic and they think this cyclone could undermine their credibility," said Aung Zaw, editor of Irrawaddy, a Thailand-based magazine and Web site put out by exiled Myanmar journalists.

"The military regime wants to conceal the extent of the damage. And they don't want the Burmese people telling foreigners the true story."

According to the U.N. the May 3 cyclone may have killed between 62,000 and 100,000, and left up to 2 million survivors facing disease and starvation.

Foreign journalists — like many foreign aid workers — have not been allowed into the country. Local reporters have faced harassment and risk imprisonment for stories that offend the famously thin-skinned ruling generals.

While a reporter in Myanmar was talking to an editor in Bangkok, loud tick-tick-tick sounds could be heard on the telephone line, often an indication of a tapped phone. That day, the reporter had been informed that the government was not pleased by an unflattering detail about the junta in a recent story. The reporter expressed concern about being arrested before abruptly hanging up, a fear that has so far proved unfounded.

Tightly controlled state media paints a one-sided picture of a beneficent junta. The New Light of Myanmar and other government mouthpieces only show images of the junta distributing aid and comforting survivors, making little or no mention of help pouring in from around the world.

Reporters Without Borders and other media watchdogs have urged the junta to lift its ban on journalist visas, noting that news reports and images broadcast around the world play a key role in helping disaster victims and reconstruction efforts.

"Journalists have an important role to play," the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists said in a statement. "Their reporting often uncovers previously undiscovered areas of need, and they help keep the international community of donors informed of conditions on the ground."

At the Myanmar Embassy in neighboring Thailand, several journalists seeking visas were told they were blacklisted after entering Myanmar on tourist visas in September 2007 during the junta's deadly crackdown on pro-democracy protests led by Buddhist monks.

Incriminating images of troops firing on monks broadcast by global news networks enraged the junta and prompted a tightening of the already severe restrictions on media freedoms, the CPJ said in a recent report.

Among those killed in last year's crackdown was Kenji Nagai, 50, a video journalist for Japan's APF News. Video footage of Nagai's death appearing to show a soldier shooting the journalist at close range was televised around the world.

Myanmar's military government said Nagai's death was an accident and that he had not been deliberately targeted.

But commentaries in the state-controlled press implied that he was responsible for his own fate because he came into the country pretending to be a tourist and then put himself in a dangerous situation.

Since the cyclone, a few reporters have managed to get into Myanmar, concealing the satellite phones, battery packs and generators needed to operate in the cyclone-hit areas where electricity is down and there is no cell phone coverage.

But getting into the country is just the first of many hurdles.

Undercover police keep constant watch over hotels popular with journalists in Yangon, the commercial capital, prompting many reporters to constantly change locations to avoid attracting attention.

"Myanmar authorities are now searching hotels outside the capital in search of Westerners. The authorities were going room to room in a number of hotels," the London-based aid group PLAN said in a statement, citing accounts from journalists in the country.

The junta's jitters are rubbing off on international aid organizations, many of which say they are uncomfortable speaking in public to reporters out of fear that associating with media could jeopardize their relief efforts.

Police checkpoints along the roads that link Yangon to the devastated Irrawaddy delta in the south stop cars to ask passengers their identities, passport numbers and reasons for travel.

"This area is restricted. No foreigners," a checkpoint officer told an Associated Press reporter on the outskirts of Labutta, one of the hardest-hit areas in the country.

CNN reporter Dan Rivers hid under a blanket in the back of a van at one checkpoint after sneaking into the country and being informed by a local contact that his TV reports had made him a marked man. Police at one point questioned him and demanded his passport, alarming Rivers who has covered hotspots around the world.

After five days in Myanmar, Rivers returned to his base in Thailand, thinking, "I'd used my nine lives up and it was time to get out of the country."

Leaving is not an option for Myanmar's local journalists, who require exit permits for trips out of the country. A variety of national security laws have been used for years to imprison journalists, political dissidents and other activists.

Last year, Reporters Without Borders ranked Myanmar as the world's sixth worst violator of media freedom, after Eritrea, North Korea, Turkmenistan, Iran, and Cuba.

Despite the hazards, many local journalists have braved the cyclone story. Some rushed to the delta immediately after the disaster and ferried back video footage to international news agencies who couldn't access the area for days. Many asked for nothing in return except an outlet to tell the world what the junta was hiding.

Irrawaddy magazine has five Burmese reporters covering the cyclone, three of whom lost their houses in the storm, Aung Zaw said. Their reports are picked up by U.S.-government funded radio stations Radio Free Asia and Voice of America, which relay them back to listeners in Myanmar.

"They are all undercover. They wouldn't dare tell people they are (journalists)," the editor said. "There is a huge risk."