Myanmar Times to Publish Burmese Daily

By MIN LWIN
The Irrawaddy News - www.irrawaddy.org

February 25, 2008 - The Myanmar Times, a weekly business newspaper with close ties to Burma’s ruling junta, may soon get permission to publish the country’s first privately owned daily newspaper since the military seized power in 1962, according to sources in Rangoon.

A source close to The Myanmar Times confirmed that it now seemed very likely that the paper would get the go-ahead to publish a Burmese-language daily newspaper soon after the regime holds a national referendum scheduled to take place in May.

However, officials at the Press Scrutiny and Registration Division (PSRD), Burma’s censorship board, would not comment on reports that the government was set to approve The Myanmar Times’ request for permission to publish on a daily basis.

“I don’t know,” said an official at the office of Maj Tint Swe, director of the PSRD, when contacted by The Irrawaddy. The official immediately hung up without further comment.

All national newspapers were nationalized after the army first seized power in 1962. Since then, no private publisher has been given permission to publish a daily newspaper.

The Myanmar Times is a semi-official publication run by Australian Ross Dunkley, who has maintained close relations with regime officials since the paper was founded in 2000.

Although his original patron, Gen Khin Nyunt, was sacked as prime minister in 2004 and subsequently placed under house arrest, Dunkley has managed to retain a relatively privileged place in the country’s restrictive publishing industry.

According to a Rangoon-based editor who is close to The Myanmar Times, Dunkley has a “cordial relationship” with Minister for Information Brig-Gen Kyaw Hsan.

The move to allow The Myanmar Times to provide daily coverage was described by journalists in the former Burmese capital as part of a public-relations offensive by the Burmese regime.

“If the regime allows Dunkley to publish a newspaper, it will become a colorful mouthpiece of the junta,” said one editor. “He is an apologist of the junta, keeping real news of what’s going on in Burma under the carpet.”

In January this year Dunkley wrote an editorial unequivocally supporting the regime’s seven-point “road map” in his paper.

The Myanmar Times was founded by Dunkley and Sonny Swe, son of high-ranking military intelligence officer Brig-Gen Thein Swe. Sonny Swe was arrested in 2004 and sentenced to 14 years imprisonment for corruption.

In 2005, Sonny Swe’s shares in Myanmar Consolidated Media, which owns The Myanmar Times, were bought by well-known publisher Dr Tin Tun Oo, secretary of the state-sponsored Myanmar Writers and Journalists Association.