Aung San Suu Kyi at World Press Freedom Day event in Yangon on May 3. Photo / Coconuts Media
In keeping with a general trend of the government backtracking on reforms, the media environment in Myanmar made a turn for the worse last year, according to a new report by Amnesty International.
Released on Wednesday, the report, Caught Between State Censorship and Self-Censorship, alleges that “the situation of freedom of expression has been deteriorating again.”
Since the end of outright military rule in 2011 and the abolition of pre-publication censorship in 2012, Myanmar’s media landscape “has seen a radical change,” the report says, pointing to an “increasingly vibrant and diverse media.”
But the new environment has also made it more difficult to know where the boundaries are, and repression has become more sophisticated.
“The government still has limits,” one journalist from the Irrawaddy told Amnesty International during the course of the group’s research. “Compared to the previous government we can get away with many more things, but if you go beyond their limits there will be action.”
What kind of action?
According to the report, in 2014 at least 11 media workers were imprisoned in connection with “peaceful journalistic activities.” Others were threatened, followed, barred from reporting in specific areas, or hit with lawsuits, while Buddhist nationalists have treated the media with disdain and outright hostility.
The cases range from the extreme, such as the five staffers from Unity newspaper sentenced last year to seven years in prison with hard labor for alleging the existence of a secret chemical weapons factory in an article, to the absurd, as illustrated by the ongoing trial of Myanmar Herald employees for publishing an interview with an opposition party figure who called President Thein Sein an “idiot.”
In the most infamous case of repression, journalist Par Gyi, also known as Aung Kyaw Naing, was killed by soldiers while in military custody in October. To date, no one has been held to account for his death.
“Such cases have had a chilling effect on journalists and other media workers in Myanmar, and have led to a climate in which self-censorship is widely practiced,” the report says.
Amnesty urges the government to release imprisoned media workers, drop “politically-motivated charges” against them, amend laws that stifle rather than bolster independent reporting, and ensure a thorough investigation into the death of Par Gyi, among other recommendations.
Minister of Information Ye Htut told the Associated Press that freedom of expression can’t be viewed independently, which is why Myanmar usually doesn’t “pay attention to such statements by international organizations.”
The government, he said, has to also take into account “the country’s fragile social and political factors, freedom along with responsibility and abidance of media ethics.”
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