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Myanmar's Other Reporters
The world cheered when two Reuters journalists were freed from prison. But who’s watching out for the rest?
Kim, E. Tammy http://www.cjr.org/special_report/myanmars-other-reporters.php
Publisher: Columbia Journalism Review
Date Written: 13/08/2019
Year Published: 2019
Resource Type: Article
Detailed analysis of the state of freedom of speech and the press in Burma/Myanmar.
Abstract:
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Excerpt:
[Swe Win]'s legal problems began in February 2017, when a hitman murdered Ko Ni, a lawyer and adviser to Aung San Suu Kyi, Myanmar's de facto head of state. Ko Ni was an outspoken reformer and perhaps the highest-profile Muslim in Myanmar. Many people hated him; he called for a new constitution and a complete end to military rule—a stance widely viewed as a threat to Buddhist Bamars, the country's ruling majority. After Ko Ni’s death, a Buddhist monk named Wirathu, a nationalist extremist who openly incites violence against Muslims, praised the accused assassins. In short order, Myanmar Now published a story about Wirathu's reaction to the murder, and Swe Win posted it to his Facebook account, adding that the monk’s response had broken Buddhist rules....
Swe Win's defamation case originated with a citizen complaint, but it was a clear instance of the army using nationalist forces to subdue its critics. And even within the offices of Myanmar Now, his digital outlet—which, since its founding, in 2015, has focused on government accountability and human rights—he has had to guard against the creep of nationalist sentiment. When police announced that they had apprehended "twenty illegal Bengalis" at a port near Yangon, for example, Swe Win instructed his staff not to parrot the government line, but to understand the story as one of Rohingya suffering: that "they were risking their lives to escape misery," he told me. "We cannot be influenced. We have to write what is true."
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