The Death of the Independent Press in Myanmar

Of all the many sad reversals that Myanmar has seen since the military takeover in February, among the most regrettable has been the near-sudden disappearance of the country’s independent press. According to a recent survey by the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), at least 32 journalists were languishing in prison in Myanmar as of July 1. In just five months, the country went from boasting a flourishing media industry, if not a fully free one, to being one of the world’s worst jailers of journalists.

Other watchdogs report slightly different figures, but all tell a similar tale. According to Reporting ASEAN, 92 journalists have been arrested since the coup as of July 21, 40 of whom remain in prison. The Assistance Association for Political Prisoners, which has been keeping a tally of those killed and arrested since the coup, puts the total number of jailed journalists arrested since the February 1 at 98.

“The dizzying pace at which military authorities have cracked down on journalists in Myanmar, as well as the sheer brutality of journalists’ treatment behind bars, should be deep cause for concern for leaders around the world who claim to stand for press freedom,” said Shawn W. Crispin, CPJ’s senior Southeast Asia representative, said in a statement accompanying the report’s release. “Every journalist behind bars is another story silenced, meaning the people of Myanmar, and the world, will never get the full story of what is happening in the country.”

The charge most commonly thrown at journalists and media workers is Section 505(a) of Myanmar’s 19th-century penal code. Amended shortly after the coup by Sen. Gen. Min Aung Hlaing’s State Administration Council in order to broaden its application, the provision now criminalizes “any attempt to cause fear, spread false news or agitate directly or indirectly a criminal offense against a government employee” or anything that “causes their hatred, disobedience, or disloyalty toward the military and the government.” The amendments also increased maximum prison sentences under the law from two to three years. As per CPJ, the new law “has effectively made independent journalism a crime.”

The press crackdown is part of an informational consolidation that has also involved nightly internet blackouts and the shutdown of mobile internet services across the country.

According to CPJ, journalists report that their colleagues behind bars have been subjected to abuse and torture; at least three have reported health problems, including the ever-present threat of COVID-19. Nathan Maung, the Burmese-American editor-in-chief of the online news platform Kamayut Media, was detained in a raid on March 9 and held for more than two months. During that time, he recalls being slapped, beaten, and subjected to sleep deprivation, the interrogators only holding off when they realized he was a U.S. citizen.

While only one foreign journalist was jailed at the time of CPJ’s survey, at least three foreign reporters, including Maung, have been detained and deported since the coup – a sign of the military junta’s contempt or indifference for international opinion. One other, the U.S. journalist Danny Fenster, remains in prison and at press time, was reportedly sick with COVID-19.

The dire media situation in Myanmar reflects a lurching reversal from the hope and optimism that blossomed during the first half of the 2010s, when Myanmar’s ruling generals engineered a sudden political and economic opening – a move that was as surprising in its own way as this year’s sudden return to direct military rule. In 2012, the quasi-civilian government led by President Thein Sein abolished Myanmar’s antique system of “red pen” pre-publication censorship, and the press flourished. New publications sprouted by the dozen as sleeper cells of questing journalists and editors capitalized on the new conditions.

While the independent press was crucial in reporting on the days following the coup, the junta has taken steps to claw all of these gains back. In addition to going after individual reporters and editors, the junta has revoked the operating licenses of eight privately run news outlets, including Mizzima, Myanmar Now, 7Day News, the Democratic Voice of Burma (DVB), and Khit Thit Media, and charged four more with violations of Section 505(a).

In its most recent World Press Freedom Index, Reporters Without Borders remarked that the coup has “set Myanmar’s journalists back ten years,” driving many back underground. “Journalists are living in fear because there is no safety for us,” a senior editor from a Myanmar news agency told Radio Free Asia in April. “The flow of news in this country has almost stopped.”

While pre-publication censorship has not yet been re-introduced, independent journalism has been rendered nearly impossible, and the media landscape is dominated by the stilted Global New Light of Myanmar and stentorian state broadcasters like MRTV. Once again Myanmar’s press is what Freedom House declared it to be in 2010: “among the most tightly restricted in the world.”

The damage extends far beyond those who have been arrested. During the reforms of the 2010s, exile publications like The Irrawaddy and the DVB opened bureaus or shifted their operations to Yangon, the country’s biggest city. The coup has reversed this, forcing dozens of journalists, artists, and media workers to fly back to the safe haven of Thailand. Others have flown to other countries and filed applications for political asylum.

In late 2011, amid the first stirrings of media freedom, journalists and editors in Myanmar expressed to me their cautious hopes about the way things were progressing. While the system of pre-publication censorship remained in place, relaxations on the press were occurring “so quickly that we are publishing articles that would have been censored completely just one or two months previous,” as one Myanmar Times editor said. But all were cautious about leaping to any binding conclusions, conditioned to view any move instigated by the military with well-honed suspicion.

One Yangon-based local reporter, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said changes to the media were a subordinate “by-product” of the wider process of reform – one that was designed to cement, not subvert, the military’s hold on power. The journalist confided to me that the first stirrings were beginning to appear real, “but everybody quietly shares the doubt and nobody’s sure.”

A decade on, as press freedom follows political freedom into the maw of a new military dictatorship, it turns out that his doubts were well founded.