A foreign journalist was reportedly killed by military troops on 27 September 2007, the second day of the Burmese junta's crackdown on protesters in Rangoon, according to exile-run news agency Mizzima.

The New Delhi based media group said the Burmese Foreign Ministry has confirmed that a Japanese photojournalist was killed. However, his name has yet to be verified.

As hundreds of people took to the streets of Rangoon on the 10th day of protests, about 200 military troops fired warning shots and threatened them to disperse or face "extreme action". Eyewitnesses said the military opened fire and sprayed tear gas on protestors, arresting and killing scores.

Troops also raided monasteries to beat and arrest the monks who have been leading marches every day since 19 September in protest of the violent clampdown against earlier demonstrations over extreme inflation brought upon by a fivefold hike in fuel prices.

With foreign journalists facing visa restrictions and local journalists under full control of the junta, citizen journalism is becoming a crucial channel of information in the totalitarian state. Protesters fleeing the baton-wielding police run to the few Internet cafés still open to report and upload photographs and video clips of the bloody crackdown as it occurs. They persevere, despite increasing disruptions in mobile phone and land lines, knowing that the junta's current atrocities must be made known to the world, failing which more will be committed with impunity by the dictatorial regime in power since 1990.

YANGON, Myanmar -- Security forces fired automatic weapons into thousands of pro-democracy protesters for a second day Thursday, and the military government said nine people were killed and 11 wounded. Tens of thousands defied the ruling military junta's crackdown with a 10th straight day of demonstrations in Myanmar's largest city, Yangon. Security forces also raided several monasteries overnight, beating monks and arresting more than 100, according to a monk at one monastery.

Among the dead was journalist Kenji Nagai of the Japanese video news agency APF News. Japanese broadcaster Fuji posted a photo on its Web site showing a man believed to be Nagai lying on his back – apparently wounded in the chest but holding a video camera in his hand - with a soldier pointing a gun at him at point-blank range.

"We hope all parties can exercise restraint and properly handle the situation there to ensure the situation does not escalate," foreign ministry spokeswoman Jiang Yu told reporters.

"Myanmar's stability should not be affected, neither should peace and stability in the region."

Jiang declined to respond directly to repeated questions on whether China condemned the killing of peaceful protesters in Myanmar.

She also hit out at some of the foreign press, which have touched on the close alliance between China and Myanmar and the potential for violence in the Southeast Asian country to hurt the image of the communist rulers in Beijing.

"China hopes that the international press can be truthful in its reporting and cover the issue objectively," Jiang said.

"Exaggeration and hyping up the issue is not advised. We have noted that a very few press have unleashed accusations against China, which is defamation out of ulterior motives."

Many foreign press reports have suggested that China is wary that a vicious crackdown in Myanmar could tarnish Beijing's publicity campaign in the lead-up to next year's Olympics in the Chinese capital.

But Jiang said the Myanmar government should work harder to improve the lives of its people.

Major mass-circulation Chinese-language papers such as the People's Daily, the ruling Communist Party's mouthpiece, had no stories on the unrest, with the nationally broadcast midday television news also choosing not to report on it.

The unrest is a sensitive issue for the Chinese government, which is one of the Myanmar junta's closest allies and is constantly on guard against an uprising against its own rule.

In 1989, China's rulers sent in the military to crush weeks of pro-democracy rallies in Beijing, which saw hundreds, if not thousands, of people killed.

Buddhist monks have spearheaded the rallies in Myanmar and there are many people in Tibet, a devoutly Buddhist region ruled by China for over 50 years, who also dream of autonomy or independence.

The popular Beijing Youth Daily was one of the few papers to run a Myanmar story on Thursday, focusing on a curfew imposed due to the "large-scale demonstrations" but contradicting global reports of a harsh crackdown.

"Myanmar officials have consistently exercised restraint in handling these demonstrations and have not employed force to disperse the demonstrators," it said.

The English-language China Daily, which caters mainly for a foreign audience, carried a small story on page seven acknowledging three demonstrators had been killed.

The Global Times, a daily that focuses on international news, was the only paper to carry a front-page report on the unrest.

A number of Western countries have urged China to use its influence on Myanmar to prevent more blood being spilt by the ruling junta, but Beijing has refrained from taking a tough public stand against the regime.

An editor at the Tibetan Daily in the regional capital of Lhasa told AFP by phone that the paper had run no stories on the recent unrest

"We have had no reports in either our Tibetan or Chinese-language versions," he said, declining to be named.

A monk at Lhasa's Jokhang Temple, the most important in Tibetan Buddhism, said he knew nothing of the Myanmar unrest.

On the other side of the world in Oslo, a shoestring radio and television network called the Democratic Voice of Burma has been at the forefront of receiving and broadcasting such cyber dispatches by satellite TV and shortwave radio.

Chief editor Aye Chan Naing said the station, founded in 1992 by exiled Myanmar students, is able to pass on nearly real-time images and information about anti-government protests _ unlike in 1988, when a similar uprising was shut down in a bloodbath that left more than 3,000 dead.

On Wednesday, the military opened fire after a month of mostly peaceful demonstrations by tens of thousands led by Buddhist monks, and the government confirmed at least one demonstrator killed and three wounded. Activists reported the death toll was five.

This time, the world has been watching through television and still images smuggled out of Myanmar over the Internet _ sometimes, Naing said, one frame at a time. Dramatic images arrive via e-mails to exiled activists and via mobile phone calls to journalists outside the country, also known as Burma. Hundreds of images are simply posted on the Internet for anyone to see.

Those inside Myanmar receive information about the protests on shortwave radio broadcasts.

``This time, compared to 1988, there are lots of new technologies to get the news out of Burma ... People are able to take pictures, videos to evidence what is going on. It is quite amazing for Burma, which is a very poor country,'' said Vincent Brossel, director of the Asia desk for Reporters Without Borders. ``Technology is the most useful weapon you can use in such types of pacifist struggles.''

Aung Zaw, editor of the independent Irrawaddy Magazine in Thailand, said that in 1988, ``it took days, sometimes weeks, even months'' to get images out. ``Now, it's so fast.''

``The world doesn't know where Burma is. Now they see images about the situation and want to know more. That's a huge difference from 1988,'' he said.

At the Democratic Voice of Burma, Naing, a mild-mannered former dentistry student, said new technologies are crucial, although he declined to give details about exactly how his 30 to 40 ``undercover reporters'' inside Myanmar get news out. Journalists working openly could be arrested.

``We don't want to say too much about how we use the Internet. They must know we use it, but we don't want to draw too much attention,'' he said. ``Mobile phones are essential. Mobile phones are the way they can report from the ground. This morning (the military) cut off some mobile phones, so we can't get a hold of some of our people.''

Brossel said the junta was trying to staunch the flow of information by slowing Internet connections and cutting cell phone service.

Slow Internet connections on Wednesday made it hard to send photos and videos, Brossel said. Many Internet cafes _ the main online providers in a country where few can go online at home _ were closed, he said.

But Brossel said the opposition was fighting back with satellite telephones, which can bypass censors, firewalls and other restrictions.

Communication inside the country is also important, said Aung Din, Policy Director with the U.S. Campaign for Burma in Washington D.C.

``Students use cell phones to SMS each other to share information,'' he said, referring to text messages activists use to set up demonstrations or tell each other where soldiers are. ``They also know how to take pictures and video with their phones, then download those and send them on the Internet,'' Din said.

Cell phones, although often confiscated, have proven invaluable, said Soe Aung, a spokesman for the National Council of the Union of Burma, a coalition of opposition groups based in Thailand.

Mary Callahan, a Myanmar expert at the University of Washington, said by e-mail that ``In 1988, it was relatively simple for the military to shut down railroads, set up road checkpoints and cut phone lines, which made it quite difficult for protesters to organize. Now, of course, protesters can use both the Internet and cell phones to mobilize support internally and externally.''

A lawyer working with the group told BMA that they will systemically document incidents by taking photos and video recordings, interviewing victims and witnesses, registering places where violations occur and filling up Human Rights Violation Report Forms. The group will also record names and ranks of the violators (police, soldier, thugs etc.) and the institutions they belong to.

“We are doing it as a preparation towards future legal actions against human rights violators who committed terrible crimes against peaceful demonstrators”, the lawyer said.

Reporters Without Borders and the Burma Media Association are outraged by the measures adopted by the military junta to prevent journalists and activists covering the on-going crackdown on protests. Most of the country's mobile phone lines have been cut and the Internet network has been drastically reduced. Charges by police and troops on demonstrators in Rangoon, especially near the Shwedagon pagoda, have left several dead, while dozens of people have been arrested and injured.

"The generals have not hesitated to use force to repress peaceful demonstrations widely reported in the international press," the two organisations said. "Knowing it is protected by China and the international community's impotence, the junta has cut the country off from the rest of the world in order to better crush the nascent saffron revolution. We appeal to the international press to step up its coverage by trying to get journalists into the country so that this dramatic situation is not played out behind closed doors."

At 3 p.m. today, the military authorities disconnected most of the country's mobile phone lines, preventing journalists and demonstrators from reporting on the crackdown launched by the security forces in the heart of Rangoon. Several journalists have been injured today, including Than Lwin Zaung Htet of the magazine The Voice.

The authorities have closed Internet cafés in Rangoon while the government-controlled Internet Service Provider, Bagan Cyber, reduced Internet traffic speed. It is getting harder and harder to send or receive photos and videos sent from Burma. Dozens of foreign journalists have been refused tourist visas by the Burmese embassy in Bangkok.

Burmese blogs, websites and Internet cafés have been closed for the past few days, while it is becoming increasingly difficult to call Burmese mobile phones from abroad, especially to Ba Maw, Mandalay and Myitkyina. Khin Mar Lar, the wife of journalist and former political prisoner Nyein Thit, was arrested at her Rangoon home yesterday when police looking for her husband with the intention of arresting him.

A group of journalists and intellectuals, the Burma Literary Association, launched an appeal on 24 September for the release of political prisoners and for national reconciliation. Despite the threats from military censors, they added their voice to the protest movement by Buddhist monks. Created on 20 September, this organisation recalls a similar one set up during the 1988 protests. One of its initiators, journalist U Win Tin, has been imprisoned since July 1989.

"We know this will be a difficult battle, but the brutal dictatorship's power has been challenged by another power, the power of love, and it is this power that will win the day," said Reporters Without Borders and the Burma Media Association.

The peaceful protest against the military began with approximately 5,000 people which soon escalated to 20,000. According to the Burma Media Association (ABC) the Burmese junta's director of the Press Scrutiny and Registration Division, Major Tint Swe, instructed all Burmese print media at a meeting last Sunday to publish a declaration stating they were not interested in the ongoing protest.

IFJ Asia-Pacific director Jacqueline Park said the gagging of the media is unacceptable.

“The Burmese people have suffered from oppression and silencing at the hands of the junta regime, and this protest reveals their desire to have their issues addressed and heard in a peaceful manner,” Park said.

“The media plays a vital role in disseminating information and key issues to the public so the people can be informed and aware.”

Swe reportedly warned the media that by joining the ongoing protests or failing to carry the announcement in their papers, they would be deemed members of the illegal association, a tactic the junta has long used to arrest dissidents.

Authorities have now issued a night time curfew and a ban on public gatherings of more than five people, measures which will be enforced for 60 days. The protest is the biggest since the nation-wide pro-democracy uprising of 1988 led by students, which ended in bloodshed as the military killed many of the protesters.

Police and troops have now taken up positions outside at least six monasteries in Burma’s largest city, Rangoon, and security forces have been deployed throughout the area.

The IFJ supports the ABC in urging the Australian government to call for the Burmese junta to refrain from taking any strong action against the protesters.

BANGKOK - Myanmar's swelling protests are in the global spotlight with the help of hi-tech gadgets in the era of YouTube – a stark contrast to the 1988 uprising in the pre-Internet age.

The peaceful protests, led by Buddhist monks, have turned into the biggest mass movement since the military regime violently quelled student-led protests in 1988, killing at least 3,000 people. Those massacres happened far from the world's view because Myanmar, formerly known as Burma, was then sealed off from the outside world before the age of the Internet and cell phones.

But 20 years later, monk-led rallies have received wide coverage in the international media thanks to the Internet, mobile phones and digital cameras, which have proved more powerful than the junta's censors. "The technology is making a huge difference. Now everyone in the world can know what is happening in Burma via the Internet," said Sein Win, managing editor of Mizzima News, an India-based news group run by exiled dissidents, "It is a reality of globalization. Whether the junta likes it or not, the government cannot isolate itself from the international community," Sein Win said.

Since the protest broke out in Yangon on August 19 after a massive hike in fuel prices, the government has tightened Internet access across the nation that has been under military rule since 1962. But some 200 Internet cafes in Yangon have continued to operate, drawing tech-savvy university students who have transmitted pictures and video clips taken on mobile phones and digital cameras around the clock. "Young people know how to get around Internet controls. Not just from Yangon, we received pictures and video clips from Mandalay," said

Aung Din, policy director of US Campaign for Burma, a Washington-based democracy lobbying group. Mandalay is the second largest city after Yangon. Aung Din, who joined the 1988 uprising, said he was overwhelmed by the difference between now and then.

"In 1988, we did not have the Internet or even phones to get our message out of Burma. Nobody in the international community knew about the 1988 uprising. But the world knows about the current protests. It's just amazing," Aung Din said.

The California-based Mandalay Gazette said it has received dozens of pictures and video clips every day from Myanmar. "Students and even monks are using mobile phones and digital cameras.

Everyone can send us pictures. In a way, the Internet makes everybody equal," said one US-based editor who declined to be named. The Paris-based Reporters Without Borders has called Myanmar a "paradise for censors" and listed the military-ruled nation as one of the world's most restrictive for press freedoms.

A statement issued on 24 September by newly-formed “Literati Association of Burma” echoed the requests made earlier by the monks protesting against the military dictatorship on the streets of Burma.

The statement obtained by the BMA supports the demands of the monks which include the release of political prisoners and a call for national reconciliation.

“The best way to solve Burma’s problems is by having a civilized political discussion, not by the power of sheer brutal force”, the statement said.

In order to respond to the biggest pro-democracy demonstrations since 1988, military junta on Tuesday night banned gatherings of more than five people and declared a dusk-to-dawn curfew, setting the stage for a showdown with the protesters.

“We know that we are facing an uphill battle. But the might and power of the brutal dictatorship has been decisively challenged by a different power, the power of love, the power that shall win the day”, a leading member of the literati association told BMA on Tuesday night.

"The junta is warning the press from joining the protests, worried that journalists, too, may be emboldened enough by the deeply moving spectacle to exercise their right to free expression in its most basic form," they said.

SEAPA said it was acting on reports by the Burma Media Association, a group of exiled Myanmar journalists and writers.

Reporters Without Borders, a press freedom group based in France, also condemned any threats made against the media.

The group said that the information minister had warned celebrities against publicly backing the protests.

Secret recordings of red-clad monks and other protesters marching Monday in the pouring rain in Myanmar's biggest city, Yangon, flashed across computer screens at the network's plain but tidy office.

Chief Editor Aye Chan Naing said strict control of the news media in Myanmar, also known as Burma, means the first news its citizens often get of what is going on in their own country comes through the station's shortwave radio, satellite TV and Internet services.

``There is no other way for the people of Burma to get news,'' he told The Associated Press on Monday, claiming that broadcasts reach as many as 5 million people in the Southeast Asian nation of 54 million.

Exiled pro-democracy student activists, including Naing, founded the radio station in 1992, a year after Burmese opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi won the Nobel Peace Prize in Oslo for her peaceful pro-democracy campaign.

Suu Kyi's party won a 1990 general election, but was not allowed to take office by the military, which has been in power since 1962. She has been detained for about 12 of the past 18 years.

The pro-democracy radio station, funded by grants from government and free speech groups from Norway, Sweden, Denmark, the Netherlands and the United States, was founded in Oslo because of Suu Kyi's Nobel Prize, Naing said.

To support the growing protests at home, the station's staff of 10 activists have doubled their shortwave radio broadcasts to seven hours per day, and have stepped up TV transmissions. But Naing said they are quickly running out of money.

``We're almost broke,'' said Naing. ``We lost some cameras in Burma. Some were confiscated by the authorities.'' He said other cameras and equipment were damaged.

Just the same, he expressed determination. ``Depending what happens in Burma, we may extend to 24 hours,'' he said.

Norwegian Aid Minister Erik Solheim this weekend said he would promptly consider any application for additional funding. Naing said he plans to apply as soon as possible.

The network sends news, appeals from leading opposition figures and information about planned protests, said Naing.

He said the media is so strictly controlled in Myanmar that almost anything they transmit is news to the people there. Last year, the network transmitted TV footage of Suu Kyi's 1991 Nobel Prize awards ceremony, which she did not attend for fear of being barred from returning home.

``It was a 15-year-old story, but it was still news in Burma,'' Naing said at the downtown office, decorated with pictures of Suu Kyi and lapel buttons saying ``Free Suu.''

The station's reporters in Burma, often using tiny hidden cameras, provide the world an often unique glimpse of what is going on there.

``We have 30-40 people on the ground, all undercover journalists,'' he said. ``All of the journalists shooting now were brought to a secret location in Thailand for training.''

He declined to say how they get images and news out of Myanmar, although he said, despite strict military restrictions, the Internet is crucial. Sometimes, TV footage is sent one frame at a time to get it through.

Working openly, he said, brings the risk of arrest, or confiscation of cameras and equipment.

Naing, 42, was a dentistry student when he fled Myanmar in 1988, spending three years in Thailand, learning journalism there. After stops in Germany and Sweden, he ended up in Oslo in 1992.

Over the past weeks, however, the monks, who are deeply revered in the Buddhist-majority nation, appeared to have paved the way for the long-repressed nation to express their unhappiness with the dictatorial rule. The monks have been marching every day since 18 September after the junta refused to apologise over a recent beating of a group of monks and violent suppression of public demonstrations against a fivefold hike in fuel prices in the impoverished country. More than 100 demonstrators remain in prison after they were arrested for joining the rare mass protests that started on 19 August.


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24.09.2007: RSF - Military censor threatens journalists who support strike call

"All the newspapers must publish a statement saying they do not recognize this organisation," Maj. Tint Swe told the meeting. "And the managing editors must ensure that journalists do not participate in the strike. If this is not published in the pages of your newspapers, the government will assume that you support the strike." The information minister has meanwhile threatened reprisals against cinema and TV workers after leading actor Kyaw Thu announced his intention to speak out publicly in Rangoon in support of the protests.


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24.09.2007: Mizzima - Junta orders Rangoon based journals to denounce ongoing protest

Mungpi

The Burmese military junta has issued a new order to Rangoon based journals and periodicals to publish a declaration denouncing the ongoing protests led by monks, a Burmese media watch dog in exile said.

The Burma Media Association in a press statement said, the Burmese junta's director of the Press Scrutiny and Registration Division, Major Tint Swe, during a meeting on Sunday instructed the journals and periodicals to publish a declaration stating that they are not interested in the ongoing protest.

"All journals and periodicals were ordered by the Information Ministry to carry an announcement in which we have to state that we are not a part of the association and not interested in taking part in the protest", BMA quoted a journalist, who attended the meeting, as saying.

During the meeting, Tint Swe also told the journalists and editors, whom he had summoned for the meeting, not to associate with the newly formed "Association of Journalists and Artists".

The Association of Journalists and Artists, a group formed on September 20, urged all journalists and editors to support and join the ongoing protests led by monks on Monday.

Buddhists clergy, which has continued protests in military-ruled Burma for a straight week, on Sunday called on all citizens of Burma – from all walks of life – to participate in the protests, turning the clergy's protest into a nation-wide uprising demanding a change in the country's administrative structure.

Tint Swe warned the journalists and editors that by joining the ongoing protests or failing to carry the announcement in their papers would be deemed members of the illegal association, a tactic junta has long used on dissidents to arrest them.

"We have no choice but to follow the order because the director explicitly said that we will be considered as members of an illegal association if we fail to carry the announcement," an editor of a sports journal said.

Meanwhile, the protests in Rangoon and parts of Burma have taken a new turn with more than 10,000 monks and over 1,00,000 civilians marching the streets of Burma's former capital Rangoon.

Protestors today shouted slogans and demanded the release of detained pro-democracy leader Daw Aung San Suu Kyi and all other political prisoners, to lower commodity prices and start a dialogue for national reconciliation in the impoverished southeast Asian nation that has been ruled by military dictators for more than 45 years.

However, the junta, which has a track record of brutally cracking down on public dissent, has so far remained silent with only a few security personnel posted on the street in front of the detained Nobel Peace Laureate Daw Aung San Suu Kyi's lakeside villa on University Avenue.


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23.09.2007: BMA - Journalists and artists warned not to participate in the protest

Major Tint Swe, the director of the Press Scrutiny and Registration Division summoned journalists and editors from Rangoon-based periodicals to his office and warned them not to participate in the anti-government protests.

The hastily-arranged meeting on Sunday morning might be an attempt by the military authorities to preempt a call from a newly-formed “Association of Journalists and Artists” that encouraged all journalists and artists to join the ongoing protest on Monday, according to a journalist who attended the meeting. The association was formed in Rangoon on 20 September.

“All journals and periodicals were also ordered by the Information Ministry to carry an announcement in which we have to state that we are not a part of the association and not interested to take part in the protest”, said the journalist.

An editor from a sports journal spoke for many when he told the Burma Media Association (BMA): “We have no choice but to follow the order because the director explicitly said that we will be considered as members of an illegal association if we fail to carry the announcement”.

The BMA condemned the act of the military regime and strongly urged the junta to respect the article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which says "Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers."

“The action of the military regime is a severe violation of personal and media freedom. BMA calls on authorities in Burma to immediately revoke the order”, said Maung Maung Myint, the president of the organization.

Since the start of the protests, the regime has been intimidating journalists by arresting them, cutting off the telephone lines and confiscating cameras and memory cards. Win Saing, a photo-journalist arrested on 28 August while trying to photograph NLD members offering to monks in Rangoon is still being held in police station in Thanlyin, near Rangoon.

BMA has also learned that movie and video actors and actresses were summoned to the office of the Motion Picture Association and given similar warning by the authorities.


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21.09.2007: IFJ - Media coverage of monks protest restricted

The International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) has expressed its displeasure at the actions taken by the Burmese junta in restricting media coverage of the mass protests being held across the country.

Media have been met with hostility from the local police force, who were attempting to restrict coverage of the peaceful protests organised by Burmese civilians against the oppressive military regime.

Hundreds of Buddhist monks have recently joined the marches, gaining widespread attention from the international community.

Footage of the protests have been hard to come by though, with cameras and memory cards were seized by plain-clothed police during media coverage of the protests, as well as the attempted arrest of another.

IFJ Asia Pacific Director Jacqueline Park described the police department's response as 'disgraceful', and urged them to be wary of journalist's rights.

''It is certainly a very heavy-handed way to deal with the media, and the international journalistic community will not stand for it,'' Park said.

''The attempted stifling of Burma's voice will not be tolerated, and any material properties seized should be immediately returned.''

On many occasions, the police have resorted to violence in an attempt to break-up the protests, and hundreds of demonstrators have been arrested since beginning their march in August.

The monks were motivated to join the protest in response to the recent beating of a group of fellow monks, along with supporting calls for an end to the violent suppression of the demonstrations.


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21.09.2007: AFP - Media watchdogs condemn Myanmar junta over protest coverage

Two media watchdogs on Friday condemned Myanmar's censorship and the use of violence aimed at preventing reporters from covering a growing campaign of protests against the ruling junta.

"The use of violence and censorship against Burmese journalists trying to cover the protests that began a month ago is a detestable strategy aimed at preventing them from doing their job," Reporters Without Borders and the Burma Media Association said in a joint statement.

The junta has also stepped up its propaganda, calling peaceful protesters "agitators bent on fomenting violence" who have been mobilised by Aung San Suu Kyi's opposition party and foreign governments, the groups said.

Nobel peace laureate Aung San Suu Kyi has been under house arrest for most of the past 17 years.

The rallies, which began a month ago amid anger at a huge fuel price hike, have snowballed into the most prolonged show of dissent since a pro-democracy uprising in 1988 was crushed by the military.

The Paris-based Reporters without Borders has called Myanmar a "paradise for censors" and listed the military-ruled nation as one of the world's most restrictive for press freedoms.

Since the protests, the regime has cut off the mobile phones of prominent pro-democracy supporters and of some journalists representing foreign media, including two from Agence France-Presse.

The state media have often accused the foreign press of stirring unrest.

No foreign journalist has obtained a visa to enter Myanmar, formerly known as Burma, since the start of the anti-junta rallies, the rights groups said.

More than 1,300 monks took to the streets Thursday in Myanmar's main city Yangon, drawing thousands of supporters in the largest anti-junta rally there since the protests first erupted.


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20.09.2007: RSF/BMA - During One Month Of Protests, Military Government Steps Up ...

The use of violence and censorship against Burmese journalists trying to cover the protests that began a month ago is a "detestable strategy" aimed at preventing them from doing their job, Reporters Without Borders and the Burma Media Association said today. It has been accompanied by an increase in propaganda in the state and privately-owned media controlled by the military government.

The two organisations are aware of at least 24 serious violations of the freedom to report news  and information since 19 August. Police, soldiers, members of the USDA (a pro-government militia) and government censors have been responsible for these violations.

Reporters Without Borders and the Burma Media Association call on the members of the Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN) to put pressure on the Burmese government to stop these serious abuses.

Deprived of news from independent outlets, many Burmese listen to the Burmese-language services of international radio stations such as RFA, VOA, BBC and DVB and surreptitiously look at DVB TV's weekly broadcasts.

The government has meanwhile stepped up its propaganda in the media it controls. The protesters are portrayed as agitators bent on fomenting violence who have been mobilised by the opposition National League for Democracy and foreign governments. The pro-government media have also accused the foreign press of creating unrest.

The censorship bureau has systematically rejected articles in which the protests against cost of living increases have been covered in an independent manner. Privately-owned media executives and editors have found themselves being ordered to publish articles favourable to the government and hostile to the internal and external "enemies."

No foreign journalist has obtained a visa to enter Burma since the start of the protests. The few foreign correspondents based in Rangoon work for the state-owned media of countries that support the military government. The Chinese news agency Xinhua, for example, has in the past month run only three dispatches on the protests, and they just gave the government's version.

Chronology of incidents:

- 18 September: Three Burmese journalists covering a demonstration by monks in Rangoon were arrested and questioned by the police, and their equipment was taken. Two of them worked for Japanese media (Asahi TV and Kyoto News Agency). The third worked for The Voice Journal, a Burmese magazine. Only the Asahi TV reporter got his camera back, but without the memory card. Hla Htwe Aung told the Mizzima news agency it was hard to recover confiscated equipment as the police, soldiers and USDA militiamen were all in civilian dress.
- 14 September: The front-page story in all the government newspapers was the military government's generals taking offerings to several monasteries.
- 12 September: The last telephone line at the Rangoon headquarters of Aung San Suu Kyi's party, the National League for Democracy, was cut. The party's leaders had often taken calls from the foreign press on the line.
- 11 September: The service on the mobile phones of Agence France-Presse correspondent Hla Hla Htay and freelance journalist May Thingyan was cut. A few days later, the AFP management asked the authorities to restore the service.
10 September: The telephones of 50 government opponents were disconnected to prevent them from talking to Burmese and foreign journalists.
9 September: Members of the Directorate of Military Engineers moved into the governmental Office of Telecommunications on Bo Soon Pat Street in Rangoon. They put taps on the phone of around 50 prominent people, including opposition members Su Su Nway, Phyu Phyu Thinn, Htay Kywe, Hla Myo Naung and U Myint Thein.
- 9 September: Privately-owned newspapers were forced to publish an official statement accusing Min Ko Naing and other Generation 88 activists of inciting a revolt.

- 4 September: Love Journal (a privately-owned magazine run by Myat Khaing, who is known to have good relations with the information minister) published a long article headlined, "People who make mountains out of molehills using the petrol price rise." Attacking the journalists covering the protests, it said: "Foreign news agency reporters are conspiring with the demonstrators to create instability in Burma."
- 3 September: Access to the video-sharing website YouTube was blocked. The country's leading Internet Service Provider, which is controlled by the ministry of posts and telecommunications, gave no explanation for the ban. Another Burmese ISP, Bagan net, had already made YouTube inaccessible. The few videos of the protests to have emerged were shot by "citizen-journalists" who used video-sharing sites like YouTube to distribute them.

- 28 August: A pro-NLD photojournalist, Win Saing, was arrested while trying to photograph NLD members making offerings to monks in Rangoon. He is reportedly still being held in Kyaik-ka-san detention centre.

- 27 August: The press registration and surveillance department ordered news editors to restrict the publication of reports about consumer price hikes.
- 27 August: The information minister, Gen. Kyaw San, told government media editors to be very careful about the kind of reports they disseminate.
- 23 August: USDA members and police prevented journalists from getting near to a group of Rangoon street demonstrators. USDA thugs jostled and insulted journalists. A Reuters reporter was ordered not to take photos of arrests. Cameras were confiscated by police.
- 22 August: Men in plain clothes manhandled an unidentified journalist as he was taking photos of public transport users waiting in line.
- 20 August: The Rangoon military command banned journalists from taking photos of demonstrations and ordered that the cameras of those who disobeyed should be seized and destroyed.
- 19 August: As soon as the first protests began, the Burmese correspondents of foreign news media reported being subjected to intimidation from plain-clothes police and USDA members. Circulating in army trucks and armed with spades and iron bars, they insulted and threatened journalists.


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20.09.2007: SEAPA - Journalists prevented from taking pictures of protesting monks

As hundreds of Buddhist monks in Burma take over from civilians to march across towns in defiance of the totalitarian military regime that has shown little tolerance for dissent, journalists are being prevented from taking pictures of what is essentially a slap in the face for the junta.

The monks, who are deeply revered in the Buddhist-majority nation, have taken to the streets in Rangoon and Mandalay since 18 September 2007, and are boycotting alms from the junta and their families to protest the recent beating of a group of monks and the violent suppression of public demonstrations against a fivefold hike in fuel prices in the impoverished country. More than 100 demonstrators remain in prison after they were arrested for joining the rare mass protests that started on 19 August.

Moe Kyaw, a journalist for the weekly "The Voice", said plainclothes police seized a US$200 memory card from him while he was covering the march of the monks in front of the La Pyae Won Plaza, Rangoon, at about 3:15 p.m. (local time) on 18 September.

The exile-run news agency Mizzima reported that unidentified men grabbed the camera of Kyodo News Agency journalist Myat Thu Ya and attempted to push him into a car. He was released after he showed his identity card. His camera, though, was taken away.

Meanwhile, the digital camera and memory card seized from TV Asahi journalist Han Htway Aung by the Police Special Branch while he was taking pictures of the marching monks on 18 September have been returned to him. However, he was told to erase all pictures on the memory card.

A symbolic censure of the junta, the march of the monks that began on 18 September also coincided with the 19th anniversary of a military coup that crushed a pro-democracy uprising against military rule, imposed since 1962.


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19.09.2007: Irrawaddy - Come Back Moezack, We Need You!

By Violet Cho

A Burmese blogger calling himself Moezack has now joined the country’s wanted list. Wanted by the authorities, infuriated by the way he slipped through their security net and posted photographs of monks marching through Rangoon on the Internet. But also wanted by a public eager for the latest information about what is happening in the crisis-hit country.

Moezak’s Web blog disappeared on Wednesday after just one day of posting images of the monks’ protests. It wasn’t clear whether the authorities had succeeded in closing the blog down. Nor was it clear whether it would reappear—the public and news organizations who used his images, including The Irrawaddy, certainly hope so, for it provided a valuable window on what is happening in sealed-off Burma.

In just one day, Moezack became Burma’s most popular blogger, his images downloaded by Burmese around the world and by international media, including the news organization Al Jazeera.

His fans posted their admiration on his chat room, at the Internet address http://moezack.blogspot.com.  “I really want to know you and want to meet you Ko Moezack,” wrote one.

“We need more photos, please,” appealed another. “We need more information please send more news…”

“What’s going on in Burma?” ran a typical message.

Some messages received by Moezak weren’t so appreciative, however. “Don't talk nonsense, Moezack,” was one reaction after Moezak posted images of Wednesday’s march by monks through Rangoon. “I know who you are and your families are in danger.”

Moezak now joins the hit list of a junta that has no time for Internet users posting political messages and images of anti-regime protests.

Nevertheless, Moezak has won the affection and support of many Burmese who gained an insight into what is happening in their country through his unusual service.  Their message is: “Moezack, we need you. Come back soon!”


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18.09.2007: Mizzima - Police destroy camera memory cards of journalists

On 18 September 2007, Special Branch police agents held and questioned three journalists, seizing their cameras and removing at least two of their camera memory cards. The journalists were covering a demonstration by monks in Rangoon against the fuel price hike and ensuing inflation.

Two Rangoon-based Burmese journalists for the Japanese foreign news services TV Asahi and Kyoto News Agency, along with one local journalist from "The Voice Journal", were released after being interrogated by Special Branch agents.

"They were arrested as they were taking pictures of monks marching on the Ahlanpya Pagpda Road and on the bridge that lies between the Yuzana Garden Hotel and the number one State High School Dagon," an eyewitness told Mizzima.

After their interrogation by township authorities, only one of the journalists, Hla Htwe Aungc of TV Asahi, received his camera back. It was missing its memory card. Two other cameras remain in police custody.

"His camera was confiscated by a military backup group on the orders of Colonel Tint San, who is military commander of Rangoon Division number three," reported the eyewitness. The journalist was told there was "no need for the memory card and those things would be clarified later. Then they took away his camera, even though he showed his Journalist Identity Card."

Myat Thura, with the Kyoto News Agency, lost his camera after unidentified men accosted him from behind and tried to pull him up onto a vehicle. He was released after he showed his identity card to the group. His camera was not returned.

"I really do not know who took my camera. The situation is very complicated because everyone is wearing the same plain clothes. We cannot identify who are police personnel, USDA members or Swan Ahshin (special police forces)," said Hla Htwe Aung.


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17.09.2007: Mizzima - Civilian journalists and media in the 2007 Burma uprising (Commentary)

by Christopher Smith

The dramatic wave of demonstrations inside Burma in 1988 (popularly known as the "8888 Uprising") took place amidst a virtual media vacuum. The dearth of real-time historical documentation of events clearly  attests to this fact. The stories of those who fell in the face of bullets were left largely to be told at a later date. Still today, there is no accurate information on the number killed or disappeared as a result of the government's heavy handed reaction.

Less than a year after the 1988 uprisings in Burma, Lhasa, Tibet, witnessed the largest demonstrations against Chinese rule since occupation by Chinese forces in 1959. An estimated 40,000 inhabitants of the ancient city were forcefully relocated in the wake of the three-day long mass uprising. By any account, a gross violation of human rights. Try finding real-time media accounts of this important period of Tibetan history.

The Emergence of Civilian Journalists and "Digital Democracy" Yet the current protests in Burma that began on August 19th, though on a drastically smaller scale than those of 1988, are subject to a relentless
barrage of media exposure – owing largely to the empowerment of the civilian population and small, independent media and information organizations taking advantage of technological advances. For instance, the
Assistance Association of Political Prisoners (Burma) daily updates the profiles and fates of those detained by the regime in ongoing crackdowns on protestors and dissidents. And if demonstrations were to wreak havoc in Lhasa, a similar phenomenon would likely manifest itself.

In a nutshell, this is precisely why Time Magazine awarded its "2006 Person of the Year Award" to…"you'". The award acknowledged the empowerment of the individual as a result of advances in technology, specifically those of a digital nature.

"It's about the many wresting power from the few and helping one another for nothing and how that will not only change the world, but also change the way the world changes," reads an excerpt from Time's lead article explaining the selection.

The fact that "civilian journalists" and independent media are coming to prominence in the coverage of the 2007 Burma protests is not proof of an exceptionally dynamic Burmese population, rather it is evidence of the lack of mainstream media options effectively servicing the ostracized country. The Burmese population, in conjunction with media outlets operating largely outside the country, is but playing its role alongside the global consumer, a role made possible largely as a result of the great strides in technological innovation.

Through the advent of "digital democracy," local knowledge has become global knowledge. And it is accurately coined a form of democracy, no less so than the mechanical routine of casting a vote in a ballot box. Each time an individual takes advantage of media technology they are capturing the world in which they live, the way they want to capture it. By electing to capture a flawed image, they can also be construed as casting a vote for change. The message is also one of here and now, and thus much more tangible to a 21st century world enamored with the present.

"They're anti-authoritarian, because authoritarians control societies by their ability to control access to information," responded Professor Francis Fukuyama to a question regarding the democratizing influence of
information technology during a Closer to Truth panel discussion.

"So if people can get information on their own simply by dialing up a computer, then we have ways of getting around hierarchies. The Internet helps to spread power out rather than concentrating it," continued
Fukuyama.

Every computer in the offices of Naypyidaw is not only a cog in the wheels of repression, but also a reminder to the generals of the democratizing influence of technology.

This, then, brings into serious question the proposed "disciplined democracy" of which the Burmese generals speak. Not as a matter of whether it is the best means forward or not, but whether it is structurally feasible or not in this day and age.

In Southeast Asia, and most of Asia for that matter, their remains a staunch refusal to diverge from honoring the stated ideal of national integrity. Countries are routinely apprehensive to insert themselves into the affairs of other countries. It is a sentiment ascribed to even by the regional stalwart of democracy: India. But again, the advent of the media revolution has made such a position ever more tenuous.

Take for example Ukraine's Orange Revolution of 2004/2005, though neighboring countries, most notably Russia, had little interest in meeting the demands of those demonstrating in the aftermath of elections, the
ability to collect and disseminate information and images globally provided that the West, regardless of how their intentions are interpreted, was able to insert itself as an influential player throughout the course of the
protests and successfully internationalize the proceedings. In short, the notion of noninterference in national sovereignty was effectively curtailed, if not altogether circumvented.

Coverage of events inside Burma is also drawing the attention and reaction of a global audience, even if certain regional players may otherwise prefer to turn a blind eye. A quick You Tube search recently yielded 43 hits for "Burma protests." Meanwhile, at the height of protests over the most recent price hikes, Mizzima, reporting in real-time on the events occurring inside Burma by means of linking with citizens inside the country, experienced a 15 fold increase in online readership.

Though the Internet is often awarded center stage in discussions of media innovations, it is by no means the only media sphere in which vast strides have been realized in the past few decades. Advances have been made in projecting sound and video, as a greater number of Burmese gain access to alternative news sources inside the country, as well as breakthroughs in telephony which have greatly facilitated the enhancement of information transmission.

Though still lagging far behind other countries, the estimated number of people inside Burma using cell phones has mushroomed from 3,000 in the year 2000 to some 200,000 users in 2006. With the black market providing the necessary technical components that may otherwise be unavailable, each of these handsets is, at least theoretically, a link with the international community and a valuable source of information.

Absent the orchestrated sensationalism and structure of traditional media sources, alternative sources of information may very well carry more authority in the minds and analysis of people around the world engaged in similar acts of expression and dissemination.

Repressive means on one hand The threats posed as a result of the technological actions of "civilian journalists" and media outlets perceived as hostile to the Burmese regime have been increasingly realized by
oppressive governments throughout the world. In early 2006 the Nepalese monarchy attempted to block cell phone service in a desperate attempt to obstruct real-time communication in a social crisis quickly spiraling out of control. Thailand banned You Tube service for most of 2007 purportedly due to the content of videos and information hostile to the monarchy and government.

Now the Burmese junta has proceeded to expand upon similar measures, including disconnecting the phone lines of politicians, political activists and prominent contacts for media sources, disrupting cell phone coverage, and disabling blog and Internet sites. Already, prior to the most recent protests, it was a criminal offence simply to own a computer or a fax machine without government registration.

However technology can almost always be countered with technology, and voices from inside Burma, citizens by default covering daily events throughout the country, continue to find their way to a wider international
audience. And in this way the plight of the Burmese population is less easily forgotten in a world where there is always something else to watch, something more to entertain.

A cautionary word on the other But there are cautionary notes to sound with regard to this avant-garde of digital democracy. For starters, real-time news is often just that…obsessed with the present. It is then occasionally too convenient to perceive the happenings as occurring in isolation, as opposed to what they are, singular events along a historical stream. And certainly the new means of dissemination can just as easily be used by those of opposing view, as the Burmese regime is increasingly trying to do and as outfits such as Al-Qaeda, through their media arm Al-Sahab, have proven effective.

Further, dialogue and reconciliation, often spoken of as key components in addressing change inside Burma, are centered on human relationships. The over reliance on technology to deliver messages could prove
counterproductive. So, while President Bush could be confident that his harsh words regarding the Burmese junta at the APEC summit in Australia were almost immediately heard in Naypyidaw, the reliance on technology to deliver the message is a poor substitute for personal interaction.

Yet, in the end, why was Time's annual award given to the general population at large? Quite possibly without even being aware of the fact, masses in the age of "digital democracy" are said to toil pro bono at the
helm of an unstoppable force: the technological devolution of power.

Though the burgeoning community of independent media may not necessarily work pro bono, they do take advantage of technology and a lower operating cost to effectively deliver information to a global audience.

While it may not necessarily spell the end of the hierarchical nation-state, the evolving channels of information procurement and transmission will at least go some distance in assuring that Burmese voices are heard, if not necessarily domestically, at least internationally. And for the citizens of Burma, this is at least one good bit of news.


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17.09.2007: Irrawaddy - Burmese Turn to Foreign Radios for Latest News

By Violet Cho

The people of Burma are turning ever more to outside broadcasts and the media in exile to learn the latest news about the continuing protests against recent price hikes.

With state media strictly censored and most Internet news sites blocked, people in increasing numbers are tuning in to the shortwave broadcasts of such international radio stations as the BBC, the Voice of America and Radio Free Asia.

Although the regime blocks most Internet news sites and keeps users under surveillance, those with the know-how are still able to access online services provided by The Irrawaddy, Mizzima and NewEra.

According to an Open Net Initiative survey, 85 percent of email service provider sites are subject to a high level of filtering in Burma. Of sites with content judged to be sensitive to the Burmese state, 84 percent are blocked. They include nearly all political opposition and pro-democracy sites.

More than 50 phone services, mostly mobile phones used by members of the opposition National League for Democracy and other activists, were cut off last week in another regime move to prevent the spread of free and accurate information.

Media censorship by the Burmese military regime severely restricts access to unbiased information. State-monopoly radio and television closely control all broadcast media, and the junta's Press Scrutiny Board orders articles even slightly critical of the regime to be inked over or torn from offending issues.

In its own coverage of the continuing demonstrations, the regime media invariably blame protesters, activists and NLD members for the violence that results when the authorities and pro-regime thugs crack down on the protests.

One Rangoon woman spoke for many when she told The Irrawaddy: “We rely on Burmese media in exile a lot now; they are the main source of news about what is currently happening in our community and areas around us.”

Another Rangoon resident said he and others he knew had stopped reading the local press for news of current affairs.


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14.09.2007 - CPJ - Authorities block journalists’ telephone services

New York — The Committee to Protect Journalists is concerned by reports that several Burmese journalists have recently had their telephone services cut by government authorities.

According to the Burma Media Association and Burmese exile-run news sources, a number of reporters have recently experienced either permanent or recurring cuts of their cell phone services. Those affected include Agence France-Presse reporter Hla Hla Htay and freelancer May Thingyan Hein, who recently won a Knight International Journalism Award.

On September 8, Directorate of Military Engineers officials arrived at the main national telecommunication complex, located on Bo Soon Pat Street in downtown Rangoon, according to information received by the BMA. Soon after, several National League for Democracy opposition politicians, including party spokesman Myint Thein, had their mobile service cut.

Since then, growing numbers of journalists and news sources have complained about blocks on their phones, according to Burmese exile-run media groups who had recently communicated with the reporters.

“Censorship in Burma takes many forms,” said CPJ Executive Director Joel Simon. “First, the authorities try to stop coverage of fuel protests by harassing and assaulting reporters, now they block their phones. Journalists have an absolute right to communicate. The government must restore full telephone services immediately.”

Burma’s authoritarian government has cracked down hard on local media coverage of the protests, which were the largest expression of popular dissent for over a decade in the tightly controlled country. Pro-government groups and plainclothes police have in recent weeks harassed and assaulted local journalists, in one case, confiscating one Reuters reporter’s cameras.

Soon after protests started August 19, the government also ordered a 10-day blackout on local news coverage of the events. More recently, the government has allowed news stories on the protests, with the government-controlled media portraying the incidents as a threat to national security, according to an informal CPJ survey of Burma’s local press.

Several foreign journalists based in Thailand who spoke with CPJ have been denied journalist visas in the wake of the unrest. Government authorities have also ordered rolling blackouts of the Internet, in apparent reaction to the flow of photos and video footage of the protests which have appeared in both the Burmese exile-run and foreign media.

Videos and day-by-day print reports about the protests have been published by several Burmese exile-run publications, including particularly detailed accounts at agency Mizzima News and Irrawaddy, an online newsmagazine. Video clips of the protests and the arrests of demonstrators have also been posted on the popular video-sharing site YouTube.


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14.09.2007: Reuters - Myanmar junta cuts phones to curb protests

By Aung Hla Tun

YANGON (Reuters) - Myanmar's military junta has cut off the phones of 50 activists or organisations, including the opposition National League for Democracy (NLD), in an apparent attempt to halt weeks of protests, sources said on Friday.

"They have cut off the telephone line to my home and to our headquarters," NLD spokesman Myint Thein told Reuters.

Other dissident sources said that, in all, 50 mobile and landline telephones had been cut off, possibly to prevent contact with the foreign media or exile news organisations whose reports are broadcast back into the former Burma on shortwave radio.

"The reason could be to disconnect the line of communication between the activists and foreign media who play a vital role in distributing the activists' message to the people," one analyst said.

Official media are giving prominent coverage to top military commanders and cabinet ministers giving alms to Buddhist monks in the main cities of Yangon and Mandalay after reports of monks threatening to turn their backs on junta members.

The monasteries -- key players in a mass uprising against military rule in 1988 -- were reported to be angry at the army's firing of warning shots over a monks' protest march in the town of Pakokku last week.

Although the rigidly controlled papers have given no reasons for the flurry of well-publicised alms-giving, sources close to the monkhood said the junta was approaching senior abbots to get them to keep their younger charges in check.

The threat of a monk boycott of junta members was reported on the Myanmar-language services of the BBC, Voice of America, Radio Free Asia and the Democratic Voice of Burma, a Thailand-based news organisation.

Monks carried out a similar threat in 1990 shortly after the junta refused to honour the results of elections it lost by a landslide.

Such rejection is taken extremely seriously in the deeply devout Buddhist country, where giving alms to monks is seen as a means of paying respect to ancestors, atoning for bad deeds and storing up merit for rebirth.

Nearly four weeks after they first flared, the sporadic protests against last month's shock fuel price rises appear to be waning. More than 150 people have been arrested and the atmosphere in the nation of 53 million people remains tense.

Rumours are also circulating that the junta's feared social movement, the Union Solidarity and Development Association (USDA), will hold mass rallies condemning the opposition on Sept. 18, the anniversary of the current regime's founding.

However, one government source said the rallies, which were also going to denounce alleged agitation by Western governments, appeared to have been postponed or cancelled.


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13.09.2007: AP - Phone service cut off at headquarters of Myanmar's main opposition party

YANGON, Myanmar _ The telephone line has been cut at the headquarters of Myanmar's top opposition party, the National League for Democracy, a party spokesman said Thursday.

The action, taken Wednesday, presumably at the behest of the military government, came as the junta has been facing the most sustained protests in a decade against its rule.

``We are a legal political party but we cannot perform legal party activities,'' said NLD spokesman Myint Thein.

Members of the party, headed by detained Nobel Peace Prize laureate Aung San Suu Kyi, have been active in the recent demonstrations.

The protests, triggered by a junta-ordered sharp increase in fuel prices, have continued since Aug. 19 despite the detention of more than 100 demonstrators and rough treatment of other participants.

Several NLD members and pro-democracy activists still at large or in hiding have reported that their mobile phone service has been cut since Monday in an attempt by the junta to curb the flow of information, Myint Thein said.

Several of the dissidents had given interviews over the past few weeks to opposition Myanmar media in exile, including the Democratic Voice of Burma, a shortwave radio station based in Norway, and Mizzima News, an online service based in India.

An official involved in telecommunications, speaking on condition of anonymity because he is not authorized to release such information, said more than 50 phones were affected by the security sweep.

Photos and videos of the recent demonstrations have been smuggled out to the exile media, which have sent their reports and images back by radio, satellite TV and the Internet.

Domestic media are tightly controlled by the junta and have little public credibility, so many people get their news from overseas.

The establishment of the foreign-based radio stations and use of the Internet have meant that information about the protests has flowed more widely and rapidly than during past challenges to the government.

Recently, however, Internet cafe operators have been ordered by authorities to report any customers who visit political Web sites.

The NLD is to hold its annual ceremony commemorating its founding on Sept. 27, but the current crackdown raises questions about whether it will be allowed to go ahead.


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13.09.2007: Irrawaddy - Junta Extends Cut-off of Phone Service to Journalists

By Saw Yan Naing

The military government has increased its clampdown on pro-democracy activists by extending the cut off of phone service to journalists who seek interviews and information.

Since protests began on August 19, information about the demonstrations, frequently from the participants themselves, flowed to journalists inside and outside the country via mobile phones and the Internet.

A correspondent in Rangoon who works for a foreign news agency told The Irrawaddy on Thursday his mobile phone service was blocked.

“First they [the authorities] blocked my mobile phone line," he said, requesting anonymity. "And now my e-mail and photos bounce back.”

The Burmese junta cut off service to dozen of pro-democracy activists' mobile phones on Monday, including the National League of Democracy spokesman, Myint Thin, and activists Su Su Nway, Phyu Phyu Thin and Amyotheryei Win Naing.

The next step was blocking phone service to journalists who are actively covering the pro-democracy groups and their political activities.

“It's like they [the junta] have covered our eyes and ears," said the journalist. "It is not good for us and it's even worse for them. It hurts their image as well.”

Sein Win, an editor of Mizzima, a Burmese exile media group with offices in India and Thailand, said his reporters find it harder to get information from inside Burma.

“I have noticed that there is more phone tapping,” said Sein Win. ongoing phone conversations are sometimes mysteriously cut off and then it's impossible to call the person back.

A reporter for the Oslo-based Democratic Voice of Burma said many of his sources' phones are now blocked. Before he could arrange interviews on the same day, but now it can take two or three days to do the same amount of work, he said.

In related news, a blog writer in Mogok, Thar Phyu, who has written about flooding as well as about local demonstrations against the hike in fuel prices, was called in by local police and issued a warning on Monday.


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12.09.2007: SEAPA - Junta bugs phones of journalists, activists; SEAPA fears further persecution

The Burmese junta has been tapping land lines and cutting off mobile phone connections of journalists and democracy activists in the highly restrictive and secretive country since 8 August 2007, according to information only recently leaked by a source of the global organisation of exiled journalists, Burma Media Association (BMA).

It would appear that, despite already having full control of the local media, the junta still intends to intimidate and deter journalists from reporting about the ongoing crackdown on those who demonstrated against the 15 August fuel price hike. The authorities have even tapped the phones of foreign correspondents, according to the BMA source. SEAPA previously reported that foreign and local journalists were repeatedly reminded to stay away from the demonstrations.

SEAPA also fears the junta will use the information obtained from the phone taps to persecute local democracy activists who are attempting to inform exiled Burmese media about the latest threats against the demonstrators. Many of these activists, whose faces are on wanted posters put up in public places, are in hiding.

The BMA source, who remains anonymous for safety reasons, said officers from the Directorate of Military Engineers came to the state telecommunication office in Bo Soon Pat Street in Rangoon on 8 August and ordered the staff to assist them in bugging telephones. Among the numbers on their list were those of prominent democracy activists Su Su Nway, Phyu Phyu Thinn, Htay Kywe and Hla
Myo Naung - who are all in hiding - and U Myint Thein, a spokesperson for the "opposition party" National League of Democracy (NLD).

When told some numbers on the list could not be tapped since they were for mobile phones, the officers ordered for the lines to be cut off and others to be tapped.

Meanwhile, the New Delhi-based news agency Mizzima (http://clicks.aweber.com/z/ct/\?00CifSC2aqmGiOX4SonrGQ\) reports that since 11 September, the mobile phones of some local journalists, foreign correspondents and those close to the media have been cut off.

According to Mizzima's 12 September report, correspondents in Rangoon believe the junta does not aim to cut off foreign media but rather to prevent local activists from conveying to the world what is happening inside Burma.

The authorities have banned websites and blogs to prevent access to information about the protests. The popular video-sharing website YouTube, which has videos of the protests, has been completely blocked since 3 September, while news sites such as the global news agency CNN and Mizzima remain among the hundreds of sites banned.

Since the start of the unprecedented public protests in Burma, hundreds of protesters and activists have been arrested. A photographer, Win Sai, was arrested on 28 August while taking pictures of a regular alms donation held by the NLD at the famous Shwedagon Pagoda in Rangoon, during which prayers were offered for members jailed by the junta, including NLD leader Aung San Suu Kyi.


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12.09.2007: Mizzima - Foreign correspondents phones under censorship blade

In continuing actions by the junta aimed at a news black-out, foreign correspondents in Burma are now the latest victims.

Since last night, the phone lines of some foreign correspondents have been cut off.

The impetus surrounding the junta's latest decision to stem the flow of information is unclear. However, correspondents in Rangoon believe the junta's actions were not driven with the aim of cutting off foreign media, but rather made in attempt to temporarily filter the contacts of political activists.

Sources told Mizzima that an emergency meeting of the foreign correspondents club may be held this afternoon on the issue of disconnected phone lines.

As the biggest demonstrations in a decade continue throughout the notoriously censored country, measures taken to terminate the flow of information have been increased, including the banning of websites and blogs in addition to the disconnecting of phone lines belonging to politicians and activists.


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12.09.2007: Reuters - Myanmar's secret press pack gives junta a headache

By Ed Cropley

CHIANG MAI, Thailand - Clandestine networks of reporters operating more like Cold War spy rings than pressmen are ensuring pro-democracy and fuel price protests in military-run Myanmar no longer take place in a media black hole.

Using technology ranging from the latest Internet gizmo to secret "drops" and the plain old postal service, the media pack in the former Burma is providing pictures and video from deep inside one of the most closed countries on earth.

Last month's footage of pro-junta gangs roughing up protesters in Yangon was a world away from the grainy archive clips of democracy icon Aung San Suu Kyi or an uprising in 1988 crushed by the army with the loss of an estimated 3,000 lives.

The news is beamed back into the country via satellite television and radio by exile news groups such as the Democratic Voice of Burma (DVB), now one of the main ways Myanmar's 53 million people learn about events inside their own country.

Apart from external TV and radio, the only other news sources have been tea-shop gossip, heavily censored private newspapers or the junta's rigidly controlled state media.

"There are many ways to get things out," DVB's Thailand-based bureau chief, Toe Zaw Latt, said, tapping the side of his nose knowingly and declining to elaborate.

"Rangoon is easy, but the provinces are more complicated. Sometimes we will have the footage but it takes a while to get it out -- although we will always get it eventually."

Besides footage shot by "citizen journalists" and passed on, DVB has 100 part-time reporters, or stringers, inside the country. To protect each other in case they are arrested, none knows the names -- or even faces -- of their colleagues.

"It takes ages when we run training courses because we have to make sure none of them sees each other," Toe Zaw Latt said.

INTERNET CAT AND MOUSE

Modern technology is the main weapon in the arsenal of the exile news agencies, funded mainly by the United States and European governments and private agencies such as George Soros' Open Society Institute.

Besides mobile phones and the Internet, some even have portable satellite uplinks -- to be used sparingly due to the risk of detection and the frequency of power blackouts.

To try to stem the information flow, the generals who have run Myanmar for the last 45 years have blocked video-sharing Web site YouTube, tried to close land borders and even suggested foreign diplomats are involved.

They have also sent 300 officials to Russia to learn how to set up a cyber-security force. Having used proxy servers and encryption programmes to run rings round the censors for years, the exiles are unperturbed.

"All we have to do is find out where they are studying and within a few hours we will know exactly what they are learning and what they can do," said one Thailand-based foreign activist.

The 2004 purge of Prime Minister Khin Nyunt and the dismantling of his Military Intelligence secret police network also seems to be a factor in an increasingly leaky junta.

Not least among the exile groups' scoops is the lavish wedding video of Thandar Shwe, daughter of junta supremo Than Shwe, which sparked outrage among ordinary people in one of Asia's poorest countries.

"Technology has changed everything," said Aung Zaw, editor of the Thailand-based Irrawaddy magazine.

"There was a crackdown after Suu Kyi won her Nobel prize in 1991 and it took three or four weeks for the news to get out. Now we are on the phone nearly every day to people who are in hiding."


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12.09.2007: XINE - Companies from four countries to invest in Myanmar cyber city project

YANGON -- Some companies from Thailand, China, Malaysia and Russia will invest in Myanmar's first prospective cyber city of Yadanabon in the early phase of its development, local media reported Wednesday.

These companies are Shin Satellite (Thailand), ZTE and Alcatel Shanghai Bell (ASB) ( China), IP Tel Sdn. Bhd. (Malaysia) and CBOSS (Russia), the local 7-Day News quoted an official responsible for the construction of the cyber city as saying.

The Yadanabon Cyber City, Myanmar's new emerging largest information and communication technology (ICT) park, is nearing completion and two phases have been set for the opening of the cyber city.

The factories from these foreign companies will be cornerstoned together with the soft opening of the cyber city in the end of this month as the first phase, while the full inauguration will follow in next January as the second phase along with the introduction of an ICT Week activities and the opening of a National Land Mark near the cyber city.

The 10,000-acre (4,050-hectare) Yadanabon cyber city project, located in hilly Pyin Oo Lwin near a highway, 67 kilometers east of the second largest city of Mandalay in the north, has been under hasty construction since last year after jungle areas there were cleared.

To attract foreign investment in the cyber city project, Myanmar has offered to grant both foreign and local entrepreneurs to be engaged in ICT business in the project to develop the silicon mountain town.

On completion of the cyber city project, investors will be allowed to directly export their computer accessories produced in the cyber city and one stop service center, which renders customs and banking services, will be established for the purpose, according to the media.

It was disclosed that green light has been opened to domestic national entrepreneurs to buy land for business engagement, while foreign investors are limited to lease land only for the purpose.

To enable prompt use of internet in the cyber city, various systems including ADSL, CATV, Triple Play and Wi Max are being installed, experts said, adding that the present stage before the soft opening deals with fiber cable installation.

According to the experts, the Yadanabon cyber city stands at a point where new internet lines linking China, Thailand and India meet.

An airport has been built at the cyber city which is 40-minute- drive from Mandalay.


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11.09.2007: Mizzima - Burma bloggers interrogated (News in Brief)

In a renewed crackdown on freedom of expression, Burmese authorities have reportedly summoned for interrogation a number of Burmese bloggers. Sources told Mizzima at least five bloggers have been interrogated or warned.


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11.09.2007: Irrawaddy - Mogok's Blog Writer Warned

By Saw Yan Naing

Thar Phyu, a blog writer and a computer shop owner in Mogok Township in central Burma, was issued a warning by local authorities on Monday, according to local residents. He is a member of the National League for Democracy's youth division. A second computer shop owner was also warned for not having a license.

Hla Oo, the chairman of the NLD in Mogok Township, said that Thar Phyu was warned by officials who were inspecting computer shops in the area.

“Authorities checked all the computer shops in Mogok on Monday. He [Thar Phyu] was called in and warned briefly, because he doesn’t have a license for his computer shop," said Hla Oo.

Thar Phyu also writes a blog for MOGOK MEDIA about the environment and political issues in the area.

The blog has recently reported about the flooding in Mogok as well as demonstrations against the hike in fuel prices.

Authorities briefly seized and checked Thar Phyu’s computer, said residents, who added that this was the first instance of a blog writer being called in and warned by local authorities.

With the spread of technology, growing numbers of young people in Burma have a personal blog and share information online.


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09.09.2007: Mizzima - Radio Free Asia interviewee arrested

2:00 p.m - Situation in Pakhokku
Interview with a resident of Pakhokku town

"The authorities are arresting informers passing on news to foreign broadcasting news agencies. Last night, authorities arrested some of them but we are not sure how many were detained. But I know Ko Than Shin and Ko Thar Aung from ward No. 8 have been rounded up. They are about 40 and 50 years old respectively. It was quite obvious it was them, as there voices could be heard being aired on the Radio Free Asia (RFA) programme. More people have been arrested but I am not sure how many. I heard they have not been released yet and we also don't know who came to pick them up,"

"The situation here is quiet now. Because there are a lot of soldiers stationed in front of the police station, market places and in front of the fire brigade."


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07.09.2007: Mizzima - Burma blocks You Tube

You Tube, the popular website which featured the ongoing protests in Burma on video, has been banned by the military junta. Access to the video-uploading website was barred four days ago.

As is usual in the secretive military ruled country, no reason has been ascribed by the internet service provider under the control of the Myanmar Post and Telecommunication Department. BaganNet, the other internet service provider had banned You Tube earlier.

However, here say among rare internet friendly users in Burma suggest that blocking the site was due to footages of demonstrations in Burma which were uploaded.

Most internet users in Burma rely on BaganNet while MPT internet users are mainly from business houses.

An internet user in Rangoon told Mizzima that the video uploading of ongoing protests against the increase in fuel prices could be the reason for the ban.

"Since August 22, when the Hledan demonstrations began, it spread through You Tube among online users here. Later more followed," he said. "We could watch every demonstration on videos," the user said.

No response was available from MPT even though Mizzima contacted the department several times.

Cyber cafés in Burma have prohibited users from browsing banned sites which include news websites such as www.cnn.com and dissidents' and pornographic websites.

Mizzima is also in the list of hundreds of banned sites.


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05.09.2007: Xinhua - Myanmar to introduce journalism degree course for first time

Xinhua General News Service

Myanmar will introduce journalism degree course for the first time in the near future to encourage the country's young generation to systematically master the skill of journalism in line with the developing media sector, local media reported Wednesday.

Jointly sponsored by the Ministry of Information and the Ministry of Education, a three-year Bachelor of Arts (Journalism) degree course will open at the National Administration College in Yangon, the Yangon Times said, inviting matriculation-passed students to pursue the professional education.

The draft journalism degree course will cover teaching of four major media-related subjects of printing media, radio, TV and news interview with geography, biology, psychology, international relations, history, Myanmar and English in addition, it said.

Graduates with the degree will be offered on-job training, the report added. In the past, journalism diploma course was once conducted in Myanmar around 1982-83 only, according to the report.

In Myanmar, there is a News and Periodicals Enterprise (NPE) under the Ministry of Information. Under the NPE, there are Myanmar News Agency and three major official daily newspapers -- the Myanma Alin and the Mirror (Myanmar language) and the New Light of Myanmar (English language).

The circulation of the Myanma Alin goes to over 100,000, while the Mirror over 150,000 and the New Light of Myanmar over 10,000, according to the NPE.

Meanwhile, the information authorities have been granting more and more private publications for circulation in recent years, bringing the total number of private news journals and magazines being sold in the domestic markets to about 200 and 250 respectively as of the end of 2006, official figures show.

The circulation of these private publications is not so large comparatively with only some few thousands to more than ten thousands but they attract a higher degree of concern from readers for their materials contained.

Among the journals granted over the past two years, sports journals dominated in number, followed by news journals which carry domestic and international news, news related to arts, children, health and crime.

Myanmar has readjusted its press scrutiny and registration policy by lifting some restrictions previously imposed upon news writing by journals and magazines with the aim of enhancing the development of press society.

According to the ministry which has taken over the duties of the press scrutiny and registration from the Ministry of Home Affairs since February 2005, the publication and distribution of journals and magazines are being continuously granted as long as it conforms to the prescribed policy.

The ministry outlined seven-point press policy for writers to adhere to, which include opening up to some extent to reporters of journals and magazines on writing which shall be constructive and be in the interest of the nation.

The number of journals covering domestic news has grown over the past eight years in Myanmar, thanks to market demand and the emergence of more such journals also contributes to the development of journalism, readers said.

Leading private news journals include Yangon Times, Flower News, Kumudra, Weekly Eleven News, Myanmar Times, Newsweek, Pyi Myanmar, Snap Shot, Popular, 7-Day News, International Eleven, Voice, 24/7 News, Zaygwet and Internet.

Meanwhile, there are a total of 20 foreign media stationed in Myanmar including four world's leading ones -- AFP of France, AP of the United States, Reuters of the United Kingdom and Xinhua of China. China's Guangming daily was the latest allowed to open office in Yangon.


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04.09.2007: ARTICLE 19 - Burma: Ongoing Protests Signal a Time to Unite

ARTICLE 19, Global Campaign for Free Expression, applauds UK Prime Minster, Gordon Brown’s statement of 2 September pledging proactive dialogue on Burma. In the light of the Burmese junta’s continued repression of peaceful protests, ARTICLE 19 calls on the international community to unite with the Burmese people in the spirit of Aung San Suu Kyi by taking peaceful action towards the restoration of freedom of expression and democracy in Burma.

"The significant protests that have been taking place in Burma over the past 16 days signal a cry for freedom by the Burmese people. The international community must respond by uniting to voice its concerns voice loudly and resolutely in favour of the people of Burma" said Dr. Agnès Callamard, Executive Director. "Gordon Brown’s pledges are noteworthy but they must be followed by action taken collectively with the rest of the international community."

Since 19 August 2007, hundreds of Burmese people have taken to the streets daily to protest against fuel price hikes. More than 150 peaceful protestors have been detained, most of whom remain in detention, and face up to 20-year jail terms. They include 13 from among those who led the 1988 protests and it is feared that these 13 may face especially harsh treatment at the hands of a junta notorious for its practice of torture. Remarkably, the protests have continued, despite the ongoing activities of State sponsored thugs, a testament to the determination of the protesters to be heard, whatever the costs.

In a strongly worded statement yesterday, Gordon Brown condemned the "Burmese government’s violent suppression of peaceful demonstrations" and called upon the Burmese authorities to "release immediately all those detained merely for protesting at the hardship imposed on them by the government’s economic mismanagement and failure to uphold fundamental human rights". He pledged to raise the issue of Burma personally with his counterparts around the world and confirmed his support for discussions on Burma at the UN Security Council and among EU foreign ministers when they meet later this week. ARTICLE 19 and its partner, the Burma UK Campaign, have long campaigned for Western governments to commit to discussing Burma with governments such as China, India and Russia who hold some influence over the Burmese Junta.

Brown’s statement coincided with the completion of the first of seven stages of the Burmese government’s "roadmap to democracy", which began in 1993. Stage one, just producing guidelines for a new constitution, has taken 14 years to complete and, during this time, respect for freedom of expression and other key democratic rights in Burma, then among the worst in the world, has deteriorated. On 19 August, a blackout on any discussion of the fuel price hike was imposed on local media and, when this was lifted on 29 August, a warning was issues to the effect that coverage of fuel hike must be "positive". Those journalists who have been brave enough to even observe the protests have allegedly been intimated and threatened by police.

ARTICLE 19 urges Brown and other leaders to take effective action to press for respect for all human rights in Burma, including freedom of expression, and to call for the release of all political prisoners, including ARTICLE 19 honorary board member, Aung San Suu Kyi.


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04.09.2007: Mizzima - Burmese generals ride roughshod over a hapless populace

By- Zin Linn

The people of Burma have been publicly protesting against the massive increase in fuel prices since the middle of August 2007. The spontaneous protests that started in Rangoon have been spreading to various parts of Burma despite a brutal crackdown by the State Peace and Development Council (SPDC). The junta has launched a big manhunt and has been detaining hundreds of peaceful protesters including 88 generation student leaders and active members of the National League for Democracy (NLD).

The state-owned media of Burma (Myanmar ) said last week that the increase in fuel prices in Myanmar on August 15 corresponded with the global trend among governments of withdrawing fuel subsidies to deal with the rising cost of oil. The price of petrol in the military ruled country went up from Kyat 1500 to Kyat 2500 a gallon, while price of diesel rose from Kyat 1500 to Kyat 3000. The biggest jump was for compressed natural gas (CNG), which rose from Kyat 10 to Kyat 50 a litre.

Officials from the Yangon (Rangoon ) Division Transport Supervisory Committee said that bus fare increase in the city since 15 August was a fall out of the massive rise in fuel prices. As a result of the increase bus fares that were previously Kyat 40 have gone up to Kyat 100, Kyat 60 fares have risen to Kyat 150, and Kyat 80 fares to Kyat 200, said the official. But in some instances, passengers have to pay more.

Justifying the increase in fuel prices, the junta explained through its media that oil prices have touched US$78.8 a barrel and several countries have resorted to raising the prices by cutting subsidies to fuel-consuming sectors. The global oil market has been at an angle, as demand for fuel grows in developing countries whose governments use subsidies to keep oil prices at well below the free-market price. As a result, growing oil demand in China, India and the Middle East has driven the free-market oil price even higher in developed countries. Egypt withdrew its oil subsidies for the electricity sector on August 14, one day before Burma/Myanmar raised its fuel prices. Egypt's Trade and Industry Minister, Rachid Mohamed Rachid, said the reduction in subsidies would save the government £15 billion in the next three years.

The editor-in-chief of Yangon-based International Economic Journal, Khin Maung Nyo (Economy) said he thought last week's rise in fuel prices in Myanmar had resulted from a reduction in oil subsidies by the government. "The governments of many countries are having trouble offering fuel subsidies as oil prices go up. We saw petrol prices in Myanmar go from Kyat 180 to Kyat 1500 a gallon after the government reduced subsidies in 2005," he said.

The junta's Information Minister and the state media also highlighted that even though CNG now costs Kyat 190 ($0.15) a gallon in Myanmar/Burma, the price is still lower than the countries where subsidies are still government policy. For example, CNG is about $3.04 a gallon in Thailand and $3.86 in Singapore, says the Myanmar Times Journal.

The junta's Information Minister failed to mention the minimum wage in is currently 191 baht ($ 5.62) a day in Bangkok, Thailand and slightly less in the provinces. The Minister Kyaw San also did not talk about the minimum wage in Burma which is currently Kyat 1000 or less than 35 baht ($1) per day in Rangoon and Naypyidaw. The monthly salary of a university professor in Burma is only Kyat 170, 000 ($ 130 or 4,485 baht) and it means $ 4.01 (138 baht) a day. Currently, two kilos of middle grade rice is around Kyat 1200 ($ 1 or 35 baht). The real question is that there are not enough jobs providing payments in line with neighbouring countries for the Burmese people. The unemployment problem in Burma is now spilling over the region. Out of a 55 million population in Burma more than five million are working not only in the neighbouring countries but also through out the world.

The military regime always refuses to listen to its general public who are only asking for fair prices for fuel and essential commodities. The stubbornness of the generals has pulled the country down to an abyss of starvation. The people have no other way out than a protest. The protests are the legitimate expression of dissatisfaction over the widely suffered effects of the regime's economic mismanagement and bad governance. These peaceful protests, triggered by the junta's precipitous increases in fuel prices, are the logical consequences of many years of political repression and irresponsible administration.

Burma's economy has remained moribund in 2006-2007, as inflation has gone up as much as 50 percent. According to the UN reports, 75 percent of the people live under the poverty line and 25 percent of households are below minimum subsistence level, half of rural families are landless, 2.2 percent of adults are suffering from HIV positive and around 50,000 die yearly. Moreover, one-third of the children are undernourished and one-tenth of them die before five years of age. According to the UN Development Programme's 2006 Human Development Report, public health expenditure equaled only 0.3 percent of Burma's GDP. High infant mortality rates and short life expectancies further highlight poor health and living conditions. The HIV/AIDS epidemic poses a serious threat to the Burmese population, as do tuberculosis and malaria. In 2006, the UNDP's Human Development Index, which measures achievements in terms of life expectancy, educational attainment, and adjusted real income, ranked Burma 130 out of 177 countries.

Due to the economic downturn caused by the military's mismanagement, there is an estimated two to three million Burmese living in Thailand. There are numerous documented human rights violations, and internal displacement of ethnic minorities is still rampant. Over a million Burmese, many of them ethnic minorities have fled for economic and political raison d'être to Bangladesh, India , China, Malaysia, and Thailand to seek work and asylum. More than 150,000 Burmese live in nine refugee camps along the Thai-Burma border and roughly 30,000 live in two camps in Bangladesh. Roughly 30,000 Burmese, most of them are from Arakan and Chin States, have fled to Malaysia.

According to the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU), referring Asian Development Bank (ADB), the total public sector deficit reached around six percent of the GDP for 2004-2005. Heavy losses by the country's state-owned enterprises (SOEs) typically account for over 60 percent of the overall deficit. The junta's fiscal position is also weighed down by high off-budget spending on its huge armed forces. Such corollary has resulted due to the junta's draconian policies that led to economic and social downturn resulting in sky rocketing commodity-prices and rates of hyperinflation.

The price increase in the fuel sector is result of the junta's dishonest policy which tends to put the overall deficit on the shoulders of the people. If the military leaders are benevolent towards the people, they should not have resorted to such a policy. Instead, they should subsidize fuel prices for domestic consumption to help the poor majority population. The financial assistance to subsidize fuel prices may not be more than $300 million while the regime has already earned $2600 million from natural gas exports to Thailand in 2006-2007.

Instead of listening to the voice of the people, the military junta continue to commit institutionalize human rights abuses through the use of gang of ruffians or the Swan-ar Shin. The blood-thirsty Swan-ar Shin have been violently cracking down on unarmed civilian protesters, who have been peacefully demonstrating because of their desperate economic situation. More and more families are facing starvation because the price of rice has doubled, there are no public transportation services to take people to work, and worse proceedings may follow. If the SPDC continues its ferocious crackdown in reaction to the growing protests, it will drag the country into an anarchic state. The crackdown is more like state-sponsored terrorism.

Supporters of democracy around the world including the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Louise Arbour condemned the violent crackdown on pro-democracy activists by the Burmese military junta and called for the immediate and unconditional release of the arrested. Even the United States President George Bush has strongly condemned the ongoing actions of the Burmese junta in arresting, harassing, and assaulting pro-democracy activists for organizing or participating in peaceful demonstrations. He also warned that the junta should heed international calls to release the detained activists immediately and stop its intimidation of those Burmese citizens who are promoting democracy and human rights. President Bush also called on the junta to release all political prisoners, including Aung San Suu Kyi, and to lift restrictions on humanitarian organizations that seek to help the people of Burma.

It is obvious that the latest precariousness in Burma is part of a long stream of problems inflicted on the people by the foolish military regime. By systematically violating the civil, political, economic, social and cultural rights of the people and blocking genuine reforms, the junta has established itself as the main threat to national and regional stability. Political and economic oppression of the people does not go with a roadmap to democracy.

The people of Burma have a dream of a new dawn in order to enjoy basic rights of freedom, and it is the role of the international community, especially regional players Japan and ASEAN members, to act for changes in Burma. Last August in the ASEAN Inter-Parliamentary Assembly (AIPA) that was held in Kuala Lumpur, Charles Chong, and a Singaporean Member of Parliament made a prediction. "All of us—ASEAN, China and India —will suffer if Myanmar's [ Burma's] situation continues to deteriorate," Chong said at a gathering of more than 20 national legislators from Cambodia, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines and Singapore to discuss Burma/Myanmar's politics. Problems sparked by the Burmese military's grip on power have hurt the region, sending refugees to Thailand and Malaysia, producing illegal drugs that spill over to China and wrecking ASEAN's efforts to be seen as an influential grouping, Chong said.

The governments of the ASEAN countries should take into account Mr. Charles Chong's far-sighted opinion. The UN Security Council members, especially China and Russia, should also think over their vetoes on the Burma issue in sympathy with the poor Burmese population who has been facing heavy taxes, starvation, diseases, arbitrary arrests and extrajudicial killings.


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03.09.2007: Mizzima - Democracy Award to honor SEAPA chair

Kavi Chongkittavorn, Southeast Asian Press Alliance (SEAPA) Chairman, has been named co-recipient of the 2007 Democracy Award.

Awarded by the National Endowment for Democracy, a private, U.S.-based organization seeking to strengthen democratic institutions around the world, this year's Democracy Award carries a theme of "Defending Free Media in Difficult Environments."

SEAPA is described by the National Endowment for Democracy as "the only regional organization with the specific mandate of promoting and protecting press freedom in Southeast Asia."

Believing that democracy and a free press are inexorably linked to one another,

National Endowment for Democracy Chairman Vin Weber states, "In countries with little or limited press freedom, independent journalists and activists committed to providing citizens with honest news and information often find themselves in the vanguard of the struggle for democracy."

Recognition of the importance of those striving for free expression and a vibrant independent media in Southeast Asia comes at a time when journalists and media groups inside Burma are reporting ever increasing barricades and intimidation in their quest to cover recent events unfolding in the country.

In 1998, Kavi Chongkittavorn was named the Human Rights Journalist of the year by Amnesty International, Thailand, in commemoration of the 50th Anniversary of the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights.

He is also assistant editor of the Bangkok-based Nation Media Group.

The 2007 award ceremony will be held in Washington, D.C. on the 18th of September.

Awarded annually since 1991, the Democracy Award has its origins in the events surrounding Tiananmen Square, in Beijing, in 1989.

Mizzima works in alliance with SEAPA in providing and disseminating information regarding Burma and Burma-related issues.


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31.08.2007: Mizzima/IFEX - Fear of censors stops local media from covering protests in Burma

While the international media and newspapers have run front page stories on the unrest in Burma, local newspapers and journals have been severely handicapped in covering the protests because of official censorship. The Burmese press scrutiny board hangs like a Damocles' sword over the Burmese media.

Despite witnessing the protests and taking photographs, producers of Rangoon-based journals said they had failed to include even a single story in their newspapers, as they have previously faced censorship by the press scrutiny and registration division of the Burmese Information Ministry.

"We all have to go through the censorship board. And if we submit our draft they will reject it or suspend it. So, nobody wants to bear the burden, as we will not get past the censors," U Hein Latt, editor of a Rangoon-based "Popular Journal", told Mizzima.

Reporters in Rangoon said that, although they witnessed the events unfolding before them and had taken visuals, the journals are not running stories. So the gathered information has remained as personal records.

"I was there at the demonstrations and as a journalist I was interested and had collected both news and photographs. But since they were not used they will remain as personal records," said a Rangoon-based reporter, who requested not to be named.

Consternation among the general population grew following the sudden hike in fuel prices on 15 August 2007. This eventually triggered protest marches on 19 August. These were followed by a week of sporadic demonstrations in Rangoon, which spread to other parts of Burma.

The Burmese military junta met the peoples' protest with a brutal crackdown conducted by the junta's civilian organisations - the Union Solidarity and Development Association (USDA) and Swan Arrshin.

The protest, probably the largest in a decade, made Burma watchers recall the country's last big public demonstrations in 1988, which the junta crushed mercilessly, killing thousands of students, monks, and civilians.

The current protests have attracted the attention of the regional and international media with newspapers in the United States running stories, editorials, opinion pieces and commentaries.

While the local media failed to cover the events, the Burmese junta's mouthpiece ran articles that accused and condemned the 13 detained 88 generation student leaders and the National League for Democracy for instigating public unrest and riots.

However, the junta has not given any official notice to the local press to restrict them from running stories on the protest.

"As far as I know, there is no official notice from the authorities not to run protest stories. But it is common sense that has guided the journal editors and producers. Some reporters went to witness the protests but did not write stories," said U Hein Latt.

However, pro-junta thugs, who cracked down on peaceful protesters, did not distinguish between reporters and protestors and attacked journalists.

A foreign correspondent based in Rangoon said, "To dispatch the stories as regional news, I could not afford to be inaccurate, so I went to the protests. But I had to flee to escape beatings."

Similarly, Rangoon-based reporters and foreign correspondents are being harassed while covering the demonstrations. Pro-junta mobs reportedly seized cameras and beat reporters.

"When the USDA saw us taking photographs, they shouted at us and said 'beat them', so we had to run away," said a reporter, who requested not to be named.

A Rangoon-based senior foreign correspondent told Mizzima that in the current situation, the restrictions on the media are worse than in 1988.

"In 1988 there were restrictions, but it was not this bad and there was no physical harassment. Now, there are a lot of restrictions on the press and reporters. This is worse," he added.


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31.08.2007: Irrawaddy - Rangoon Reporters Accused of Conspiring with the Protestors

By Htet Aung

A Rangoon pro-junta journal has accused reporters working for foreign news agencies of conspiring with protestors to create instability in the country by taking advantage of a recent hike in fuel prices.

“It is clearly a conspiracy of the protestors and local reporters to incite unrests [in the country] because the reporters reached the protest area in advance,” said May Nine, the article's author.

The article, titled “People Making a Mountain Out of a Molehill by Taking Advantage of Fuel-price Hikes,” appeared in The Love Journal on Monday.

A Rangoon-based journalist working for a foreign news agency told The Irrawaddy by telephone on Friday: “No conspiracy. We, as journalists, report what is happening [in Rangoon] ethnically and responsibly.”

“This is our duty. We will do it now and continue to do it when our country becomes a democracy.”

He added that in the past he had faced threats by soldiers and police when protests occurred in Rangoon, but this time, the threats came from members of an unknown plainclothes mob.

The Love Journal is published by MK Media, one of the largest media groups in Bruma. Local reporters denounced the article and the journal's editor, Myat Khaing, who reportedly has a cozy relationship with Information Minister Brig-Gen Kyaw San.

“The author of the article is Myat Khaing himself, and May Nine is one of his pseudonyms,” said a local reporter who requested anonymity,    

 “It is very irresponsible [for a journalist] to write such an article,” said Sein Hla Oo, a former veteran editor and a parliament-elect member of the National League for Democracy in the 1990 election, told The Irrawaddy on Friday.

“It is shameful for a Burmese citizen to write such an article leading to disunity when the young student leaders, regardless of their life and imprisonment, have tried to bring about national reconciliation and democracy in the country,” he said.

Myat Khaing is also chief editor of The Mahar Journal and several other publications. Local journalists say he is among a handful of journalists who are carrying out the regime’s counter attacks to the international press which has criticized the junta's human rights violations.


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30.08.2007: SEAPA/IFEX - Government warns against reportage on commodity prices...

Official censors in Burma have warned editors against tracking commodity prices in line with staggering fuel price hikes, SEAPA contacts inside the country say. Amidst a continuing crackdown on protesters and oppositionists who have risen up against a doubling of fuel prices in the space of a month, Burma's military government has also been keeping an already restricted media on an even shorter leash.

One editor of a local publication told SEAPA that during the week of 27 August 2007, some journals were warned by the Press Scrutiny and Registration Department (PSRD) against reporting commodity prices, especially in the context of rising fuel costs. Even prior to the protests that broke out in mid-August, local business journals were already forbidden from printing graphs that would more easily illustrate climbing costs for commodities such as fuel, rice, and sugar. Some papers, therefore, make do with publishing weekly lists of prices, leaving it to readers and consumers to interpolate trends, validating their own day-to-day experiences in Burma's markets.

The recent protests, however, have apparently compelled the government to further monitor this compromise practice.

Meanwhile, a Rangoon journalist told SEAPA that on 27 August Minister of Information General Kyaw San personally advised editors and managers of Burma's state-monopolised radio and television programmes to be "extra careful" with their news reporting.

The editor of a popular local journal said self-censorship has inevitably compounded more overt censorship and pressure from the government. Private journals - of which there are hundreds in Rangoon - are steering clear of covering the protests directly, the editor said, knowing that the PSRD will not let any such reportage pass, and worry that even attempting to allude to the developments could intensify the monitoring of their papers.

Indeed, foreign and local journalists have been repeatedly reminded not to go near any demonstrations.

Sources said Military Intelligence (MI) agents on one occasion warned a Japanese video journalist not to take out his camera as he anticipated a gathering crowd of protesters. He was reportedly told agents had been authorised to assault people taking photographs. At another event near the US embassy where a one-man protest was taking place, two local journalists were about to take out their cameras to take pictures when an MI agent approached and said, "That won't be good for you. So put away your cameras".

Intimidated by all the government harassment, many editors have reportedly set their own guidelines, which, among other things, disallow the use of office cameras for the coverage of protests. Some journals have also reportedly advised their staffs that, should they choose to cover the events, they will have to do so as individuals and freelancers, as their offices may not be able to take the consequences of government reprisal.

Since the start of these rare public protests in Burma, hundreds of protesters and activists have been arrested, and there have been numerous reports of journalists being harassed for covering the events. Reporters and photographers have reportedly been harangued by thugs unleashed by the government.

On 28 August, photojournalist Win Sai was reportedly arrested as he was taking photographs of an alms donation event in Rangoon's Shwe Dagon Pagoda, which was organised by the National League for Democracy (NLD). Win Sai, a freelance journalist who also happens to regularly document NLD activities, is reportedly being held at the Kyaik-ka-san detention center, a SEAPA source said, although information has been difficult to gather on his detention.


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29.08.2007: CPJ - Burmese authorities move to restrict news coverage of protests

New york - The Committee to Protect Journalists is gravely concerned about the Burmese government's restriction of news coverage of recent nationwide protests over an August 15 government decision to end fuel price subsidies.

According to the Burma Media Association (BMA), plainclothes police and pro-government groups brandishing crude weapons have threatened, harassed, and physically assaulted a number of local journalists who have attempted to cover and photograph the protests and the government's retaliatory crackdown. Police are believed to have arrested more than 150 protesters, including prominent members of the dissident 88 Student Generation group.

The military command meanwhile issued a ban against photographing the protests and security forces have been deployed to enforce it. An unidentified local Reuters journalist had his cameras seized by police on August 23 after he attempted to take pictures of junta-backed militias detaining a group of protesters, according to media reports.

"Not content with starving its people of information by restricting news distribution, the Burmese junta is now using intimidation and threats to prevent news gathering," said Joel Simon, CPJ's executive director. "Reporters have a right to cover the fuel protests in Burma without being set upon by plainclothes police and pro-government thugs. We call upon the Rangoon government to ensure that all journalists can work without harassment and censorship."

Meanwhile, state censors imposed a 10-day blackout of all news coverage of the protests, apart from the occasional propaganda piece in the pro-government New Light of Myanmar (Burma). All newspapers and magazines are censored by government authorities before publication, while all broadcast media outlets are tightly controlled and owned by the military government.

The Southeast Asian Press Alliance, a regional press freedom advocacy group, reported recent rolling blackouts for both cell phones and the Internet. Burma already maintains some of the world's most comprehensive restrictions of the Internet, intended as a means of cutting off the flow of information to dissident publications outside the country. CPJ's e-mails in recent days to journalists inside Burma all went unanswered.


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29.08.2007: RSF/BMA - Military Authorities Use All Means Possible to Prevent Coverage of Current Unrest

Reporters Without Borders and the Burma Media Association firmly condemn the methods being used by the military government to prevent journalists, including those working for foreign media, from covering a wave of unrest in response to an increase in the price of fuel. The two organisations call on European embassies in Rangoon to publicly defend the right of Burmese journalists to work without obstruction.

"The military's response to the wave of protests against price increases since 19 August has again been heavy-handed repression, intimidation and censorship of Burmese journalists," the two organisations said. "Despite the violence by the military and their bully-boys, reports and pictures of the demonstrations are being seen abroad. This testifies to the courage of the Burmese journalists and demonstrators."

The censorship bureau and the police stepped up controls after the government decided to raise the price of fuel on 15 August.

The Burmese correspondents of foreign news media say they been subjected to a great deal of intimidation from plain-clothes police and members of the Union Solidarity and Development Association (the regime's militia) while covering the recent demonstrations in Rangoon. Armed with spades and iron bars and circulating in army trucks, police and militiamen have been insulting and threatening journalists.

An unidentified journalist was roughed up by men in plain clothes as he took pictures of people lining up to take public transport in the capital on 22 August. USDA members and police prevented journalists from approaching a group of street demonstrators in Rangoon the next day. USDA thugs jostled and insulted journalists. A Reuters reporter was forbidden to take pictures of arrests and the police finally seized his cameras.

As a result of this intimidation, Agence France-Presse has described coverage of the current events as "delicate." A journalist working for a foreign news organisation based in Bangkok told Reporters Without Borders that its Burmese stringer had been forced to stay away from the demonstrations because of the constant intimidation.

"Men in plain clothes impose an atmosphere of fear around the demonstrations which prevents us from working," said one Burmese journalist employed by a foreign news organisation. "It is hard to risk being arrested for a photo."

The Rangoon military command has banned journalists from taking photos of demonstrations and has ordered the seizure and destruction of cameras from those who do not comply. In order to hamper the dissemination of reports, the authorities are said to have slowed Internet traffic, even for private companies. According to some accounts, it has become increasingly difficult to access gmail.com and gtalk. Mobile phone networks have also been disrupted since demonstrators began gathering every day in Rangoon last week.

Lots of the images and reports of the demonstrations seen abroad have come from demonstrators or amateur journalists. The magazine Irrawaddy has paid homage to them and is talking of the emergence of "citizen-journalists" in Burma.

After banning the Burmese media from publishing any reports about the demonstrations, the government announced that their leaders, known as the Generation 88 activists, will be prosecuted for trying to start an uprising. They face up to 20 years in prison. After a 10-day news blackout, the media have also been told they can now refer to the fuel price increase, albeit only in positive terms.


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28.08.2007: SEAPA - Journalists in Rangoon are reporting a rapidly deteriorating situation ...

One week after the breakout of rare public protests over rising fuel prices, and within days of a resulting government crackdown on activists and oppositionists, SEAPA is receiving troubling news that the work of journalists and the flow of information inside the country is further being restricted.

The Democratic Voice of Burma says that on 22 August, a local journalist had his camera confiscated and destroyed by thugs deployed by the government. The following day, DVB adds, a Reuters correspondent was bodily threatened and pushed away by a similar mob as he tried to cover one of sporadic protests as it was beginning to form. Other local journalists were reportedly ordered to stay away from the demonstrators.

SEAPA sources inside Rangoon meanwhile are reporting a palpable drop in Internet and phone access in the country. The government, through the state-owned Myanmar Infotech Corp. Ltd., holds a monopoly over Internet providers in the country. SEAPA contacts say whole pockets of Rangoon are suffering from intermittent and rolling interruptions in their access to both the Internet and phone services.

Web-based email and telephony services such as Gmail and GTalk - already de facto banned in past years, but until two weeks ago still reliably accessible via proxy servers (and apparently tolerated by Burmese officials) - have seen more disruptions and become less reliable, individuals have also told SEAPA.

The difficulties and harassment experienced by journalists is leading to further self-censorship in Rangoon's local journals.

There is virtually no coverage of the protests inside the country, save for the official propaganda placed in state-owned and controlled newspapers such as the New Light of Myanmar.

More than 150 people have been arrested in Burma in the past week, all owing to the Rangoon junta's crackdown on fuel price protests.


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28.08.2007: SEAPA - SEAPA E-Newsletter : Internet, telecoms, media access rapidly deteriorating in Rangoon

Journalists in Rangoon are reporting a rapidly deteriorating situation for covering the sporadic protests, and brewing crisis, in Burma.

One week after the breakout of rare public protests over rising fuel prices, and within days of a resulting government crackdown on activists and oppositionists, SEAPA is receiving troubling news that the work of journalists and the flow of information inside the country is further being restricted.

The Democratic Voice of Burma says that on 22 August, a local journalist had his camera confiscated and destroyed by thugs deployed by the government. The following day, DVB adds, a Reuters correspondent was bodily threatened and pushed away by a similar mob as he tried to cover one of sporadic protests as it was beginning to form. Other local journalists were reportedly ordered to stay away from the demonstrators.

SEAPA sources inside Rangoon meanwhile are reporting a palpable drop in Internet and phone access in the country. The government, through the state-owned Myanmar Infotech Corp. Ltd., holds a monopoly over Internet providers in the country. SEAPA contacts say whole pockets of Rangoon are suffering from intermittent and rolling interruptions in their access to both the Internet and phone services.

Web-based email and telephony services such as Gmail and GTalk - already de facto banned in past years, but until two weeks ago still reliably accessible via proxy servers (and apparently tolerated by Burmese officials) - have seen more disruptions and become less reliable, individuals have also told SEAPA.

The difficulties and harassment experienced by journalists is leading to further self-censorship in Rangoon's local journals. There is virtually no coverage of the protests inside the country, save for the official propaganda placed in state-owned and controlled newspapers such as the New Light of Myanmar.

More than 150 people have been arrested in Burma in the past week, all owing to the Rangoon junta's crackdown on fuel price protests.


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28.08.2007: Mizzima - Burmese investigative reporter given KIJ award

A Burmese investigative reporter, May Thingyan Hein, has won the 2007 Knight International Journalism Award along with an Egyptian blogger, Wael Abbas.

 

A freelance journalist, May Thingyan Hein (33) was given the 2007 KIJ Award for her outstanding coverage of controversial topics such as corruption, HIV/AIDS and poverty in military-ruled Burma, said the International Centre for Journalists (ICFJ) in a press statement on August 24.

 

"Wael Abbas and May Thingyan Hein are blazing a path in their countries with extremely bold coverage," said ICFJ President Joyce Barnathan. "We want to honour them for

exposing issues no one else will cover and encourage others to follow their example."

 

The award will be handed over at the 10th annual ICFJ Awards Dinner at the Ronal Reagan Building and International Trade Center in Washington D.C on November 13, 2007, the statement said.

 

The award given by the KIJF programme, funded by the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, Knight International Fellows lead high-impact projects that help news media make societies more accountable to their citizens.


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27.08.2007: WAN - Just Published: New Media - The Press Freedom Dimension

The impact of new media on press freedom -- both positive and negative -- is the subject of a new report available from the World Association of Newspapers.

"New Media: The Press Freedom Dimension" includes discussions and recommendations from an international conference that took place in February in Paris. Speakers from more than 30 countries discussed topics ranging from citizen journalism and freedom of expression to Internet censorship. The conference was organised by United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO), WAN, the World Editors Forum and the World Press Freedom Committee, with funding from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation.

The book, published by UNESCO, includes speeches, reports and background papers presented at the conference. It can be downloaded free (in PDF format) at http://www.wan-press.org/article12826.html

"The news is becoming, happily, more and more a dialogue between the providers and receivers of information rather than an imposition of opinions and perspectives from an elite caste," said Timothy Balding, CEO of the Paris-based WAN, in a chapter entitled, "Press Freedom: Every Citizen's Right."

"On the negative side, the Internet has opened up extraordinary new possibilities for the widespread, damaging and sometimes dangerous manipulation of information, which is difficult if not impossible to stem.
In my view, this phenomenon will increasingly place a heavy responsibility on professional journalists to maintain high standards of fact-checking, honesty and objectivity. The very fundamentals of our societies and
democracies will be lost if we are unable any longer to distinguish between true and false information."

Other contributors to the report include Neil Budde, General Manger of Yahoo!; Steve Yelvington, Vice President of Morris Digital Works in the United States; Oh Yeon-Ho, founder of OhmyNews in Korea; Rosental Calmon Alves, Director of the Knight Center for Journalism in the Americas; Monique Villa, Managing Director of Reuters; Richard Winfield, Chairman of the World Press Freedom Committee and a host of other experts from countries as diverse as Russia, South Africa, Rwanda, El Salvador, Burma and others.


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27.08.2007: AHRC - "Arrest" in Rangoon epitomises lawlessness of a country

The Democratic Voice of Burma radio has posted a video on its website that vividly illustrates the true nature of the recent "arrest" of protestors against the price hikes in fuels there. The footage, shot by an unidentified person at around 1pm on 25 August 2007, shows at least six unidentified plain-clothed men carrying protest leader Ko Htin Kyaw struggling as he is literally lugged away and bundled into to a waiting vehicle in the centre of downtown Rangoon, within sight of the famous Sule Pagoda. The video can be viewed at: http://dvb.cachefly.net/tv/all/htinkyaw.wmv

The film shows the undeniable reality that "arrest" in Burma today is nothing other than state-sponsored abduction. Htin Kyaw and another man, Ko Zaw Nyunt, had together been standing peacefully outside the Theingyi market when they were taken. Had the authorities wished, they could have sent uniformed police officers to make an arrest under any of the terms set down in section 54 of the country's Criminal Procedure Code and taken the two men on foot to the nearest police station. Instead, an unknown gang, presumably consisting of ununiformed Special Branch police but perhaps also comprising of other persons--such as members of the army, quasi-government agencies, local councils and gangs organised by the state--came out of nowhere to grab and drag off their quarry in the manner of criminals.

The apprehension of Ko Htin Kyaw epitomises the lawlessness that is Burma today. The Asian Human Rights Commission has for some time raised and demonstrated through numerous detailed cases how, quite apart from its completely empty rhetoric about democratisation and human rights, the military regime there cannot even claim to subscribe to the tenets of its own "law and order" agenda. Burma is neither a country of law nor order. Contrary to the exterior image, it is a country whose population--from the daily wage earners of the rundown industrial zones at its centre to the villagers hiding in the jungles of its hinterlands--is subjected to relentless, arbitrary violence and bullying, sometimes by known and identifiable others, but often by nameless, unknowable assailants and their abettors.

Regrettably, the international community has responded to the recent wave of protest with deafening silence. Despite the risks to their lives and liberty taken not only by the protestors but also by the persons documenting and sending audio and video footage and written details abroad, the reaction of the United Nations has been non-existent. The European Union, normally a staunch and vocal supporter of human rights in the country, has been little better: three short paragraphs from the presidency on August 25 condemned the arrests but did not indicate that the union would do anything more. Only the representatives of a few individual governments have spoken out more strongly, but again given no indication of any pending action.

As the generals have become used to such pathetic and worthless reactions from abroad, no matter what they do, they will naturally feel no compunction to continue using their nameless goons to drag people from houses, buses and street corners. They will continue with the fraud that has characterised all aspects of their rule, and the implementing of a national agenda that has nothing to do with the interests of the people of Burma, or even those, including law and order, to which they pretend to subscribe.

The blatant and violent abduction of Htin Kyaw and Zaw Nyunt from the street in Rangoon cannot be denied. The global community also cannot afford to ignore it. Every one of those concerned international officials should take a long hard look at this footage and then ask themselves what sort of "arrests" they are "concerned" about. They must cease to pretend that they are dealing with a government with whom "constructive dialogue" can be had on "mutual engagement" and devise more determined strategies to support the efforts of people in Burma themselves to see international standards of law and rights given meaning in their country, with or without the acquiescence of the state.


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27.08.2007: Irrawaddy - Burmese Citizen-reporters Create Direct Link to International Media

Photographs, video clips and firsthand news reports about the recent protest demonstrations against the Burmese government's fuel price increases appeared in some international media on the same day.

Such instantaneous images and information is a sign of a shift in the ability of the reclusive regime to control reports of events within the country.

Thanks to the availability of new communication technologies among citizen-reporters and even demonstrators themselves, the repressive acts of the military regime—which the outside world knew little of in the past—are now able to be reported by the world media almost as they happen.

Compared to the communication standards of the neighboring countries, however, the draconian control of all communication channels in Burma, including mobile phone, e-mail and Internet Web-sites, is still one of the worst in the world.

But, in spite of such controls and the watchdogs of the regime’s extensive intelligence network, citizen-reporters and demonstrators were able to report the latest human rights violations committed by the regime and their organized thugs.
 
The Irrawaddy team recognizes the fact that it is mainly because of these citizen-reporters’ increasing awareness and their ability to use the international and exiled Burmese media that the country's plight was publicized so widely during the past week.

What’s perhaps even more important is that these citizen-journalists are becoming more brave, recognizing that they are performing an important task. They dare to report the regime’s injustice, oppression and violations of international humanitarian law and basic human rights.

The Irrawaddy, as members of the exiled Burmese media community, regards their emerging role as indispensable in the long struggle for democratization in Burma.

International media such as BBC World Services and The New York Times are now able to broadcast and publish rare photographs and video clips of the oppression by the military regime, even in remote cities.

For instance, it was impossible for a prominent leader, such as Htay Kywe, to send a political message to the world community in the late 1990s. But now he is able to communicate with the foreign media while in hiding.

During the recent demonstrations, foreign journalists and local reporters were under strict limitations imposed by the regime. But the story went out.

The world knows about the protests in Rangoon and other cities throughout the country: the photographs, the video clips and the news reports appeared in the international media thanks to the will, the commitment and the courage of individual Burmese citizens who understand that truthful accounts of events in their country are powerful weapons that can weaken the repressive regime.


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24.08.2007: Irrawaddy - Journalists Covering Demos Complain of Harassment

By Saw Yan Naing

Reporters and photographers covering the protest demonstrations in Rangoon complained on Friday that they were being harassed by the authorities and pro-regime elements.

Reuters photograph of USDA members and plainclothes breaking up protest on Shwegonedine Road in Rangoon taken by journalist assaulted by the pro-government mob (Photo: Reuters)

A correspondent of the international news agency Reuters told The Irrawaddy he was pushed by unknown men, who tried to take his camera. “They said we can’t take photos,” he said.

The Bangkok-based media advocacy group Southeast Asian Press Alliance expressed its concern on Friday about the harassment of journalists. SEAPA Executive Director Roby Alampay said: “We are very concerned about situation recently in Rangoon. We heard that some editors were interrogated by the police.

“We are concerned about freedom of assembly and the freedom of the press. It is a very terrible situation in Burma.”

Alampay called on the international community to closely monitor the situation.

Rangoon sources said many reporters from leading journals and periodicals had been told by their editors not to cover the demonstrations. “Editors told them that if anything happens to them they will not accept responsibility,” one editor told The Irrawaddy.

Media sources said that only a few correspondents from major news agencies such as AP, AFP and Reuters were covering the demonstrations, while local reporters were apparently staying away.


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24.08.2007: SEAPA - Disrupted information flow following beatings and arrests of protesters will encourage impunity

The Burmese military dictatorship may be tightening the already restricted telecommunication channels in the country to prevent information about the ongoing mass protests and arrests in Rangoon from leaking out, according to SEAPA sources.

Internet users in Burma who are trying to communicate with their contacts outside the country are experiencing constantly disrupted connections, while worried friends and relatives overseas are finding it difficult to reach those inside on mobile phones.

Authorities have also confiscated the mobile phones of leaders of the pro-democracy group, 88 Generation Students, who were arrested on 22 August 2007 for spearheading protests against the recent sharp increase of fuel prices. SEAPA sources say the junta is trying to prevent international media from obtaining the latest information about the protests that have been held every day since 19 August, following the price hike that has paralysed the public transport system and drastically affected prices of essential commodities. Callers to the well-known dissidents said they received a message informing them that the government has cut off the number they are trying to reach.

With the junta's iron-fist hold on information and all channels of communication, the people rely on foreign media for the truth, even when it comes to events within the country.

SEAPA fears that the apparent moves by the Burmese junta to restrict information from reaching the international community will lead to a worsening situation for the people. Hidden from the eyes of the world as such, the repressive regime may feel emboldened to commit more acts of impunity against the peaceful protesters.

Driven to desperation by the worsening inflation in a country where 25 per cent of its 47 million population are already living in poverty, about 500 citizens have been taking to the streets every
day despite the risk of arrest and beatings at the hands of mobs paid by the junta.

Bystanders who fear expressing their unhappiness in the same conduct could only support those who are "speaking" on their behalf by bringing them food and water, and cheering them on with the thumbs-up sign, according to news reports.


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22.08.2007: SEAPA - Junta further tightens telecommunications ...

The Burmese military dictatorship may be tightening the already restricted telecommunication channels in the country to prevent information about the ongoing mass protests and arrests in Rangoon from leaking out, according to SEAPA sources.

Internet users in Burma who are trying to communicate with their contacts outside the country are experiencing constantly disrupted connections, while worried friends and relatives overseas are finding it difficult to reach those inside on mobile phones.

Authorities have also confiscated the mobile phones of leaders of the pro-democracy group, 88 Generation Students, who were arrested on 22 August 2007 for spearheading protests against the recent sharp increase of fuel prices. SEAPA sources say the junta is trying to prevent international media from obtaining the latest information about the protests that have been held every day since 19 August, following the price hike that has paralysed the public transport system and drastically affected prices of essential commodities. Callers to the well- known dissidents said they received a message informing them that the government has cut off the number they are trying to reach.

With the junta's iron-fist hold on information and all channels of communication, the people rely on foreign media for the truth, even when it comes to events within the country.

SEAPA fears that the apparent moves by the Burmese junta to restrict information from reaching the international community will lead to a worsening situation for the people. Hidden from the eyes of the world as such, the repressive regime may feel emboldened to commit more acts of impunity against the peaceful protesters.

Driven to desperation by the worsening inflation in a country where 25 percent of its 47 million population are already living in poverty, about 500 citizens have been taking to the streets every day despite the risk of arrest and beatings at the hands of mobs paid by the junta.

Bystanders who fear expressing their unhappiness by the same conduct could only support those who are "speaking" on their behalf by bringing them food and water, and cheering them on with the thumbs-up sign, according to news reports.


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22.08.2007: Mizzima - Editors interrogated following public rally

Editors from a leading journal in Rangoon were called in for interrogation by police on the evening of 20 August 2007, one day after a rare public protest over sharp fuel price rises in Burma.

While those concerned refused to speak on record, Mizzima confirmed with other sources that the editors were indeed questioned by the police that evening. Male editors were called into police headquarters for interrogation, while female editors were interrogated in their homes. The sources alleged the interrogations were at the behest of the Military Affairs Security, which had accused the editors of favouring the National League for Democracy (NLD), the political party that was denied its right to govern despite winning a landslide victory in the 1990 polls. The military has been ruling Burma since 1962.

The interrogation of the editors followed a 500-strong public rally on 19 August in Rangoon in protest of a sudden rise in fuel prices, which has paralysed the public transport system and drastically affected commodity prices.

In a rare show of mass defiance against the totalitarian regime, Burmese continued to protest in the following days, leading to a wave of arrests on

22 August of leaders of the 88 Generation Students - the group of students who led the 1988 pro-democracy uprising - and other student and civil advocacy groups.

Among those from the 88 Generation Students arrested were Min Ko Naing, Ko Ko Gyi, Ko Mya Aye, Ko Pyone Cho, Ko Jimmy and Ko Yin Htun. A source in the Home Ministry said they have been detained in Kyaikkasan, a stadium-turned-detention centre. The exact number of those arrested could not be confirmed and it is feared that those who could not be contacted have been detained.

Five university students, Kyaw Ko Ko, Nyan Oo, Yar Zar Mon, Nyan Linn and Nyi Linn Oo, were arrested at 10:00 a.m. (local time) on 22 August while they were putting up a poster demanding reductions in the prices of fuel and basic commodities. Members of the Union Solidarity Development Association (USDA), a "non-governmental organisation" whose patron is junta head Senior General Than Shwe, and plain-clothed police officials arrested them.

The junta has iron-fist control over all media and vigorously censors dissent. Protesters risk arrest and torture.

The Southeast Asian Press Alliance (SEAPA) has called on the international community to closely monitor the tension in Rangoon, as the crackdown on activists could easily spill over to encompass the media - as perhaps already evidenced by the reported interrogation of editors on 19 August - and, in general, lead to a worsening of what is already one of the worst environments for free expression and other human rights.


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21.08.2007: Mizzima - Editors of Burma's leading media group interrogated

Editors of Eleven Media, one of Burma's leading media group, were summoned by the Special Branch of the police in Rangoon for interrogations as of last night, sources in Rangoon said.

 

While the male editors were called-in for interrogation, the Special Branch conducted an in-house interrogation to the women editors at their living quarters, added the source.

 

While the reason for the interrogation is still unknown, sources said the editors of the media group have been accused by the Military Affairs Security, which replaced Burma's former Military Intelligence Service, of being pro-National League for Democracy, Burma's largest opposition party.

 

Wai Phyo, one of the editors-in-charge of the Eleven Media, however, flatly denied that there had been any interrogation and said, "I have not even heard about it."


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14.08.2007: SEAPA - "Public service" mobile phones disconnected in Burma, further limiting access to information

With the media fully controlled and the Internet restricted, the Burmese junta is now paving over cracks in its hold of information brought on by advances in telecommunications.

Authorities in the Lashio town of Shan state in northern Burma recently disconnected the lines of more than 400 mobile telephones that had been rented for public use, further restricting local
residents' access to information from relatives and friends outside the country.

Because landlines are beset by a host of infrastructural problems and constantly tapped by the authorities, making communication with people overseas especially difficult, Public Call Office (PCO) operators in Lashio had hired mobile telephones for about 60,000 Kyat (approx. US$50) each for their business.

These "public service" mobile phones are a popular alternative to landlines since even a simple overseas call through the latter requires an explanation to the operators and the call rates are
extremely high.

They also serve as one of the channels of information for those living inside the totalitarian state.

However, the lines of these mobile telephones have been temporarily disconnected following a review of the profile of their owners as the Burmese authorities have clued in on this practice, targeting those whose bill exceeded over 100,000 Kyat (approx. US$80) a month.

"The authorities said the mobile lines have been cut off because they are used for commercial purposes. But I feel that it is not their concern whether we use them for commercial activity or not as long as we can clear the bill," a PCO operator told Mizzima.

Although some mobile phone users have provided valid reasons for their excessive bills, none of the connections has been revived; in fact, more mobile phone lines were disconnected in Lashio town after that.

Prior to this, in mid-July 2007, Burmese authorities banned an Internet telephony, MediaRing Talk, which enables free calls to specified countries through the Internet.

On 13 July, Burma's Telecommunication Department, under the Ministry of Communication, Posts and Telegraph, issued a notice that mobile phone users should inform the department of overseas calls that gave local number identifications. These calls are made through Voice-over-Internet Protocol (VoIP), rending obsolete the use of overseas phone cards that have to go through the ministry, which charges US$0.24 per minute for it. By preventing calls made through VoIP, the ministry is attempting to curb the flow of information from abroad that is facilitated by the cheaper rates.


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03.08.2007: Mizzima - Mock ad in "Myanmar Times" ushers in stringent regulations

A mock advertisement placed by Danish political satirists in the 23 July 2007 issue of "The Myanmar Times" lampooning the Burmese junta supremo did not amuse the censorship board, which retaliated by further tightening the already rigid regulations on media advertisements.

On 31 July 2007, Maj Tint Swe, the head of the Press Scrutiny and Registration Board, summoned representatives of 25 journals and magazines to inform them of a new 28-point regulation, warning that those who flout the rules would be stripped of their press licences.

The new guidelines stipulated that advertisements would only be accepted in either Burmese or English, the only two languages familiar to the censorship board. Advertisements would have to include the full name and address of the company placing them and the respective journals would shoulder the responsibility for the "correctness" of any insertion.

The fake advertisement, the brainchild of Danish artists Pia Bertelsen and Jan Egesborg, had a Danish-looking word - "Ewhsnahtrellik" - which, when read backwards, said: "Killer Than Shwe" (referring to the Burmese military head). Apparently inviting Scandinavian tourists to visit Burma, the fake advertisement also incorporated a poem, with the first letters of each line spelling: "Freedom".

On 24 July, special police interrogated at least 10 "Myanmar Times" staff, including those from advertising and marketing, over the advertisement, but took no further action against them. Details of the interrogation remain sketchy as the development is still recent.

Journalists and reporters in Burma said the regulations are uncalled for and restrict freedom of the press as a whole.

According to wire agency AFP, the Danish duo, calling themselves the Surrend, did it as a way of criticising autocrats, replicating their successes in Iran and the former Yugoslavia.


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30.07.2007: Mizzima - Court defers defamation hearing against Weekly Eleven

Nem Davies

 

July 30, 2007 - Hearing of a defamation case against Weekly Eleven, a Burmese journal was postponed by the Tarmway Township court in Rangoon today. The Burmese Cultural Ministry's historical research department has pressed charges against the weekly for publishing a report it considers defamatory.

 

The department earlier this month sued the Weekly Eleven, a Rangoon based Burmese journal, over a report it published in December 2006.

 

Though the editor of the weekly journal arrived for the court hearing, the judge decided to postpone it to August 13, sources close to the journal said.

 

The weekly's report had criticized tour agencies for serving dinner on the ruins of the temples of Pagan, one of Burma's major tourism spots, to attract tourists. The report also quoted locals, who deem such conduct as inappropriate and disrespectful towards the highly revered temples in Burma.

 

In a contradiction of government policies, though the Burmese censorship board, which is notorious for censoring any writing against the regime, passed the report, the Burmese Cultural Ministry's historical research department took the journal to court.

 

The historical research department has charged the journal of publishing inaccurate and misleading reports. The journal editors have decided to present the censorship board as a witness to defend them, sources close to the journal said.

 

An editor of the journal refused to talk about the case saying, "It is still too early to say anything. We cannot say anything at the moment as the matter is in court."

 

An official at the Burmese Cultural Ministry in Naypyitaw, Burma's new jungle capital, refused to comment saying, "I am not authorized to speak and there is no officer to answer at the moment."


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30.07.2007: Mizzima - Ban of popular internet telephony Mediaring Talk

The Burmese military junta has banned the use of the popular internet telephony Mediaring Talk, an online telephone-enabled overseas telecommunication system which was available at cheap rates, sources in Rangoon said.

Mediaring Talk was banned by Burma's Ministry of Communication, Post and Telegraph as of mid-July 2007, said an employee working at one of Rangoon's internet cafés, the Cyber World. "Earlier customers were able to use Mediaring Talk. But it is banned now, it has been about a week or two that it can no longer be used," the employee added.

Mediaring Talk, which allowed free phone calls to Australia, Canada, Hong Kong, Singapore, Taiwan, the UK the USA and provided low rates to other countries, was introduced in Rangoon about six months ago. It became popular among users who wished to communicate with people abroad, said an employee of an internet café at the popular Junction 8 shopping centre in
Rangoon.

"Now we have no customers using Mediaring Talk. And it has been about a month that our internet connection has become very slow. And if internet is slow, Mediaring Talk does not work. Even though we made enquiries about the ban, no specific reasons were given," she added.

"Mediaring Talk might have been banned because it is cheap. In cyber cafés they only need to pay the internet usage charges to call overseas. Here all voice chats are banned," the employee at Cyber World told Mizzima.

According to observers, banning the popular free voice calls and slowing down the internet connection before the opening of the National Convention on Burma's Martyr's Day could be a move by the government to prevent dissidents from communicating in and outside Burma.


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25.07.2007: Mizzima - Myanmar Times staff interrogated for hidden advertisement

An ostensibly innocuous advertisement in the Myanmar Times, a semi-official English-language journal in Burma, has raised a storm with editors and staff members being interrogated by the Special Branch of the Rangoon police.

 

At least 10 staff members of the production and marketing department of the Myanmar Times were interrogated on Tuesday over the advertisement, which allegedly contained hidden political satire in its latest issue.

 

The advertisement, which seems like an invitation to Scandinavian tourists to visit Burma, was placed by a Danish group of artists known as Surrend group in Monday's edition of the Myanmar Times.

 

The bottom of the advertisement has a Danish looking word -- "Ewhsnahtrellik".  When read backwards, it reads "Killer Than Shwe". The ad also has a popular poem, when the initial letters are added up --it reads "Freedom".

 

Sources close to the journal told Mizzima, that following the advertisement; Rangoon 's Special Branch police on Tuesday interrogated at least 10 editors and staff members of the production and marketing department.

 

However, no action has been taken, said the source.

 

Refusing to provide detailed information on the interrogation, an official at the Myanmar Times told Mizzima, "It is still too early to comment."

 

Meanwhile, reports said copies of the Myanmar Times, which carried the advertisement, were rapidly sold out with the price of the journal, in the black market, rising to Kyat 2,000 (approximately US $ 1.5). And photo copies of the advertisement were also made available.


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20.07.2007: Mizzima - Government department to sue journal for criticising tourism efforts

The Burmese Ministry of Culture's historical research department will sue a Rangoon-based public interest news journal, "Weekly Eleven", for a report it published, which ironically has been passed by the censorship board.

The report, published in December 2006, criticised tour agencies for serving dinner on the ruins of the temples of Pagan, one of Burma's major tourism spots, to attract tourists.

Although the Burmese censorship board, which is infamous for censoring any writing against the government, has approved the report, the Burmese Cultural Ministry's historical research
department is taking the journal to court.

A court in Tarmyaw Township has summoned the journal's editor to a hearing on 30 July.

However, the charges against the journal will only be revealed in court, sources close to the journal said.

Speaking on condition of anonymity, a senior editor of a Rangoon-based magazine told "Mizzima" that the journal cannot be faulted for publishing the report as it has been thoroughly checked and passed by the censorship board.

". . .[E]verything [in written form] goes to the censorship board for review and only with their permission can anything be published. We all do the same thing. We have to send everything to
the censorship board. So, it's not the fault of the journal. The censorship board is there to filter it," the senior editor said.

"We all have to go through the steps the censorship board has laid down and only after that can we publish. So, we are not at fault. But it would be different if we publish without permission. It is difficult to understand why the journal is being sued as it has published the write-up only after the board permitted it," he added.


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19.07.2007: RSF - Press kept away from National Convention

Reporters Without Borders today condemned the government's decision to obstruct foreign and Burmese press coverage of a national convention that has the job of writing a new constitution. No foreign journalist has been given a visa, while Burmese journalists were granted only very limited access to yesterday's opening session.

"This convention is in fact an institutional sham, and the military government seems to be so ashamed of it that it has decided to keep journalists away," the press freedom organisation said.

A BBC World Service journalist told Reporters Without Borders that the government had originally planned a six-day programme for foreign reporters, including a news conference on the national convention and a visit to the new capital. The BBC's Bangkok bureau even got a call from the Burmese embassy asking it to come and collect its visa on 13 July.

But then, for unexplained reasons, the consular service refuse to issue it. Other foreign news media such as Agence France-Presse confirmed that their visa requests had been unsuccessful.

Burmese journalists working as correspondents for foreign news media were allowed to visit the place where the convention is taking place, Nyaung-Hna-Pin, located 30 km outside Rangoon. But they were forbidden to go with tape-recorders or mobile phones, they were not allowed to spend more than a few minutes in the convention room where the thousand delegates were gathered, and they were prevented from independently interviewing any of the participants.

About 50 journalists were allowed to attend the news conference that was held in October 2006, when the convention finished its previous work.


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18.07.2007: Irrawaddy - Pagan Dinner Parties Row

By Aye Lae

The Burmese Culture Ministry's historical research department is suing the Rangoon journal Weekly Eleven for reporting o­n dinner parties organized by a number of tour agencies in the ruined temples of Pagan, o­ne of the country’s major tourist attractions.

The report, published last December, said local residents had found the events disrespectful. Wine had been served to tourists dining within the ruins.

“The report was not intended to hurt anyone,” said Editor-in-chief Wai Phyo in a telephone interview with The Irrawaddy. He said Weekly Eleven had published it “for the sake of the country.”

Wai Phyo said Weekly Eleven had received permission from the Information Ministry’s censorship board to report o­n the dinner parties. He said he did not know details of the charge against his journal.

The Culture Ministry’s department of historical research in Naypyidaw declined to comment o­n the case, which will be heard by a court in Rangoon’s Tarmway Township.


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17.07.2007: Mizzima - Burmese junta restricts media coverage of convention on new charter

The Burmese junta has imposed restrictions on media coverage of the National Convention on the drafting of the constitution, to be held on 18 July 2007.

Burma has been without a constitution since 1988, when its 1974 charter was suspended following a coup led by a new junta regime. In invitation letters to local media and foreign news agencies in Rangoon, the convening committee specified that only one journalist from each organisation may attend the opening ceremony of the much-criticised constitution drafting process, which is targeted for its final session at the convention.

Journalists were also told not to bring in tape recorders and mobile phones.

"The invitation letter told us not to bring in cell phones, cassette recorders, purses and bags. However, some had carried the items despite the same instructions being given last time," a Rangoon-based foreign correspondent told Mizzima News, a web-based news publication run by exiled Burmese journalists in New Delhi, India.

Based on past experience, journalists will only be allowed to cover the opening ceremony but not the actual convention, which will see the attendance of 1,000 delegates.

"Usually we are allowed to stay there for only 10 to 15 minutes just after the opening ceremony. That's it," the source added.

Meanwhile, some foreign journalists who have applied for visas into the country to cover the convention have yet to obtain them.

The opposition National League for Democracy (NLD), which obtained a landslide victory in the 1990 general elections and boycotted the constitution drafting process in protest of the detention of its leader, Aung San Suu Kyi, has branded the convention as a "sham" since the delegates are mostly hand-picked by the junta.

First held in 1993, the convention was resurrected in 2004 after an eight-year hiatus following NLD's protest walkout. The convention is the first of seven steps on the junta's "roadmap to democracy", to culminate in free elections. The draft constitution must be endorsed by a referendum before a general election can be called.


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17.07.2007: Irrawaddy - Rangoon Journalists Invited to Cover NC's Final Session

By Aye Lae

Burma's ruling junta has invited 25 local Burmese media groups and 20 foreign journalists based in Rangoon to cover the final session of the constitution-drafting National Convention set to begin tomorrow, according to journalists in Rangoon.

Journalists from the English language weekly newspaper The Myanmar Times and the Burmese language publications Yangon Times, the Eleven Media Group and Snapshot Journal, are among those allowed to cover the upcoming session.

"The government will not hold a press conference, but it will allow the journalists to attend the opening ceremony of the National Convention and to take photos," the Rangoon journalist told The Irrawaddy on Tuesday.

Another Rangoon journalist said she had not yet received an invitation letter. "They are allowing journalists who will write positive things about the National Convention, while other journalists are ignored," the journalist said.

Burma's main opposition parties, including the National League for Democracy, have charged that the proceedings of National Convention have not been democratic. The NLD withdrew from the convention in 1995, while several ethnic opposition groups have also refused to participate.

Foreign journalists in Bangkok claimed on Monday that a previous plan to allow them one-week visas to cover the convention's final session had been suspended by the Burmese Embassy in Bangkok.

The junta allowed more than 50 foreign and local journalists to attend the press conference of the last session of the National Convention, which was convened in early October 2006.


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17.07.2007: Mizzima - Burmese authorities release solo protester, family

On 21 June 2007, Burmese authorities released a demonstrator in the western state of Arakan after detaining him for two days.

Balagyi (alias) Maung Kyaw Naing was arrested on 19 June, for staging a solo protest at a market place in Taungkok town, Arakan state, demanding a solution to the growing economic difficulties.

Following his arrest, local police raided his home and arrested his mother, Daw Thaung, and sister Ma Khin Aye. Both were released the next day.

While detained, Balagyi was interrogated by U Kyaw Khaing, the chairperson of Taungkok township, a member of the pro-democracy party, National League for Democracy (NLD), in Taungkok told Mizzima.

"They asked Balagyi mainly about whether he was controlled by the NLD. And whether he is a member of the NLD," the source said, adding that Balagyi and his family, however, were not forced to sign any sort of agreement for their release.

Balagyi and his family could not be contacted due to difficulties in getting connected over telephone.

The Burmese junta has full control of the media and censors talk of democracy, detained NLD leader Aung San Suu Kyi, the current economic crisis and criticisms against authorities, leaving citizens with no choice but to take to the streets to make themselves heard, despite the real threat of arrest and torture.


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13.07.2007: The Weekly Holiday - Indian newsmen raise voices for fellow Myanmar scribe

Nava Thakuria in Guwahati

The notorious press censorship in Burma may witness severe criticism on and off from western media organizations, but this time a group of Indian journalists has come out to protest against the anti-media attitude of the ruling State Peace and Development Council (of Myanmar). The union of journalists from Manipur, a Northeastern state bordering Myanmar had recently made a historic step expressing solidarity with the detained Burmese journalists inside the South East Asian country. The focus of the cohesion was U Win Tin, who had been under detention for the last 18 years in a Myanmar prison.

Imprisoned U Win Tin
The All Manipur Working Journalists Union (AMWJU), in a press statement on July 4, demanded the immediate release of the Burmese journalist-editor U Win Tin, who was arrested by the military junta in 1989 on the same date. The former chief editor of Hantharwaddy (in Burmese language), U Win Tin, among hundred others, who were arrested during a military crackdown throughout the country following the mass uprising in late Eighties.

?U Win Tin was detained on July 4, 1989, primarily for his critical write-ups against the ruling junta and for his activism as an adviser to Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, the General Secretary of the National League for Democracy,? informed a New Delhi-based exiled Burmese journalist. He also alleged that the elderly and ill health journalist had been subjected to torture in the prison. ?He has been denied proper medical attention and food and compelled to sleep on the floor. But the junta has failed to break his spirit,? added the exiled journalist, who has been living in India for more than a decade now.

Born in 1930, U Win Tin graduated from Rangoon University and joined Sarpay Beikman (Burma Translation Society) in 1950 as an assistant editor. Later he shifted to Kyemon Daily in 1957 as the executive editor. Finally he became the chief editor of Hantharwaddy Daily. U Win Tin was honoured with the UNESCO?s Guillermo Cano World Press Freedom Prize, World Association of Newspapers? Golden Pen of Freedom Award, Freedom of Expression Award, Reporters San Frontiers Award for his relentless efforts to promote freedom of expression in a land under an oppressive regime.

International media organisations have been raising voice for his early release since long. The World Association of Press Councils (WAPC), in recent statement, argued that U Win Tin was jailed primarily for being a journalist and an advocate of democracy. ?He is a man of high courage and serves as an inspiration for all who struggle for freedom of expression. We demand his immediate release from prison,? stated the WAPC Secretary General, Chris Conybeare.

The Committee to Protect Journalists, Reporters San Frontiers and Southeast Asian Press Alliance have also called on the military rulers of Myanmar to immediately release the elderly journalist. The Burma Media Association (BMA), a network of Burmese journalists in exile argued that ?no sensible person can accept such cruelty of this military regime which has imprisoned a sick 78-year-old man for 18 years?. ?We call for him to be freed at once,? declared in a recent press statement by the BMA secretary Son Moe Wai.

The entire media in Myanmar is however surviving under strict censorship of the military junta. The journalists are prevented outright from covering the activities of the Nobel laureate Ms Suu Kyi, who has been under house arrest since May 2003. Many news portal, which are traditionally critical to the military regime are banned in the country. Even e-mail access is restricted throughout the country. The local media (mostly in Burmese) is tightlipped while reporting the ongoing atrocities and human right violation by the military throughout the country.

Recently the SPDC chief General Than Shwe was singled out as a menace to press freedom by the Reporters San Frontiers. The Paris-based media rights body had accused the SPDC for arresting not less than 50 working journalists and maintaining absolute control over the Myanmar media, where the only daily newspaper of the country ?The New light of Myanmar? is used as its mouthpiece.

Speaking to this writer from Imphal (capital of Manipur), the AMWJU general secretary J. Maibam said, ?We have protested against the elongated detention of all Burmese journalists and appealed to the authorities to show minimum respect for those journalists under their custody including U Win Tin.? The AMWJU officials remain vocal for any kinds of atrocities against their member-journalists. Manipur, being a home to nearly 20 armed outfits fighting New Delhi for fulfilling various demands, experiences regular harassment of media-persons while on duty to cover insurgency related issues.


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06.07.2007: Mizzima - Lawyer suspended two years for criticising court

On 29 June 2007, the Supreme Court suspended a lawyer from practice for two years after finding him guilty of violating section 10(1) of the Burma Bar Council Act by "criticizing and attacking a court ruling".

The Act states that lawyers who are found guilty of "bad morality" can be dismissed or have their license suspended.

Thein Nyint, 63, was said to have attacked a Supreme Court judgement on a land eviction case during an interview with the Washington D.C.-based Radio Free Asia (RFA) Burmese programme in January 2005.

In the radio interview, Thein Nyunt, who has been a lawyer for 25 years, had commented on a 2004 case in which he had defended a family of eight from being evicted from where they had been staying for more than 20 years.

They lost the case and were later charged and found guilty of resisting eviction. The Supreme Court sentenced all to four months in prison on 30 December 2004.

Commenting on the judgment itself, Thein Nyunt had cited "make justice injustice, make injustice justice" from an official court publication.

The Supreme Court, in sentencing Thein Nyunt, said he had exaggerated the situation and had concocted for the broadcast media a malicious account against the state. The court claimed that by criticizing the court ruling, Thein Nyunt had also created misunderstanding among the public about the kind of justice rendered by the state's judicial system.

"My argument in the said case only cited what former Chief Justice U Thein Maung said in the first Justices meeting, which appeared in the official publication of the Supreme Court itself, which says 'make justice injustice, make injustice justice'. (Yet) they (found fault with) these words in the judgment and handed down this order and suspended my license,"

said Thein Nyunt, whose appeal against his suspension was dismissed.

Thein Nyunt is also an "elected" representative of the Thingangyun constituency in Rangoon under the shadow Parliament formed by the National League of Democracy, whose right to govern following a landslide election win in 1990 was denied by the junta.


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05.07.2007: SEAPA - Journalist U Win Tin spends 18th year in prison

Journalist U Win Tin spends 18th year in prison; denied early release for refusing to renounce political activity

On 4 July 2007, Burma's most famous journalist, U Win Tin, will have spent 18 years in prison for having displeased the Burmese junta.

SEAPA remains gravely concerned at the continued imprisonment of the 77-year-old journalist and poet, and once again calls for his immediate release.

In March 2007, U Win Tin had reportedly stressed to a prison director that "it is my right to be free because I have served 18 years of my 20-year sentence and I qualify for early release."

U Win Tin was eligible for early release in July 2006, but was denied this right for not having performed hard labour.

Despite his poor health, he has consistently refused to renounce political activity as a condition of his release.

According to Burma Media Association (BMA), a network of exiled Burmese journalists, he recently told a friend who was allowed to visit him that "two prison officers asked me at a special meeting last week whether I would resume political activities if I were released. I told them that I will definitely do so, since it is my duty as a citizen to strive for democracy".

U Win Tin's principal crime, said BMA vice-chairperson Zin Linn, was being a key adviser to Aung San Suu Kyi, the general-secretary of National League for Democracy (NLD), whose landslide win of the 1991 general elections was never recognised by the military regime.

He has been sentenced thrice, each time while incarcerated: first, to three years with hard labour for instigating civil disobedience against martial law; then, to 11 years over another case for the same "offence". He is now serving a seven-year sentence over his testimony to the United Nations on the military's record of human rights violations against political prisoners. Promises of his release in 2004 and 2005 were never fulfilled.

Since 2006, the International Committee of the Red Cross has been barred from visiting him. U Win Tin has had two heart attacks and has suffered from high blood pressure, diabetes and an inflammatory disease that affects his spine. His poor health was exacerbated by ill treatment, which has included torture, lack of medical treatment, solitary confinement without bedding, and being deprived of food and water for long periods of time.

Even though a prison doctor attends to him twice a month, he is dependent on medication and food brought by his family and friends.

Denied paper or writing instruments, the resourceful journalist reportedly formulated his own ink out of powder extracted from the bricks of his cell, and fashioned a pen from a piece of bamboo mat.

He received the UNESCO/Guillermo Cano World Press Freedom Prize, the World Association of Newspapers' Golden Pen of Freedom Award and Reporters Without Borders/Fondation de France Prize for his steadfastness to the cause of freedom of expression despite facing great adversity.


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04.07.2007: Asian Tribune - Journalist U Win Tin Spends 18 years in Burmese Prison

By Zin Linn*

Today, June 4, marks the 18th year in prison for writer-journalist U Win Tin. He was a member of the central executive committee of the National League for Democracy (NLD) and a key adviser to Aung San Suu Kyi who has been leading peaceful protest against the military regime. He was picked up on this day in 1989, during a nation-wide crackdown by the military authorities on the opposition.

Initially, the sentence was for three years with hard labour. The charge: as a dissident 'he had used his influence upon people to urge them to mount a civil disobedience campaign against martial law. His jail term was subsequently extended to 21 years; the regime promised his release first in 2004 and later on in 2005 but these promises was never kept like all other promises the Junta has been making only to break. Since the beginning of 2006, U Win Tin is barred from receiving visits from the International Red Cross even.

U Win Tin, former editor-in-chief of the Hanthawadi Daily, spent his 77th birthday in solitary confinement on 12th of March. He is the only journalist- prisoner of conscience under solitary confinement for over 18 years. He also holds the record as the longest serving journalist detainees in the world. On one occasion, the prison authorities had assured the Red Cross that U Win would be released early and that his sentence would not be extended. The promise was a mirage.

The Junta has been pressurising him to give up political activity if he wants to breathe a free man. But U Win has turned down the demand not once but several times and refused to sign a letter on the dotted line. In July 2006, his name figured among 118 political prisoners listed for early release from Insein prison. But he was left out in the end for reasons that remain a mystery.

He was singled out of that group for the honour of being thrown back into solitary confinement. A jail officer reportedly told him in July 2006 that he could not hope for release as he did not do hard labour. What logic? Only a heartless junta can think sentencing an old person to hard labour.

On his 77th birthday, Reporters without Borders and the Burma Media Association lamented: "The inhumanity of this military junta, which has imprisoned a sick, 77-year-old man for nearly 18 years, needs no further proof. By refusing U Win Tin the right to early release, the regime breaks its own laws and promises. We call for him to be freed at once." The Committee to Protect Journalists also called on the military authorities to immediately release U Win Tin.

The seasoned journalist is not keeping good health. He has had at least two heart attacks. He suffers from hypertension, a degenerative spine condition, inflamed prostate and urinary infirmity. A prison physician provides him twice-monthly checkups. But he largely depends on the support of his friend's family, who regularly bring him food, medicine and clothes.
When Paulo Sergio Pinheiro, the UN Special Envoy for Human Rights in Myanmar, visited U Win Tin on his birthday in 2005, he was moved as much by the deplorable conditions he was kept in and by the fact that his failing health has been made worse by poor medical care and the effects of improper surgery. Prof. Pinheiro said in his report, "I was very moved when U Win Tin narrated how he has no access to paper or a pen".

This denial of 'instruments of his craft' has not served to silence the journalist and poet in U Win. To fight his forced silence, he fabricated his own ink out of powder extracted from the bricks of his cell, and fashioned a pen from a piece of bamboo mat. Although Prof. Pinheiro's mission is to secure freedom for all political prisoners, it is important for him to take up individual cases, especially of U Win and other political prisoners who are old or ill, more so as the PEN, Canada points out the detention of the journalist-author – HR campaigner is a violation of Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

Presently in Burma, there is no freedom of association, no freedom of expression, no freedom of the press and no freedom of profession under Burmese military regime which styles itself as the State Peace and Development Council (SPDC). Approximately 1200 prisoners of conscience and political prisoners are in custody; they include Members of Parliaments, students, doctors, teachers, journalists, writers, lawyers, actors and housewives. They are all serving long sentences in notorious prisons across Burma.

Democracy and national reconciliation will remain a mirage as long as the junta continues to incarcerate Nobel Laureate Aung San Suu Kyi, and political activists for decades. If the SPDC truly wants to show its commitment to democratic process, it should release all political prisoners prior to resuming the so called national convention on 18 July 2007 at Nyaung-hnapin camp in Hmawbi Township.

People of Burma are deeply disturbed that ASEAN member states as well as neighbouring China and India are making no effort to promote stability in their country. They also feel sad that these powerful neighbours are ignoring the deteriorating rule of law and respect for all internationally recognized human rights and basic freedoms inside Burma.

The United Nations has been calling for political reforms including release of political prisoners since 1991. The world body has adopted several resolutions but these concerns have not gone beyond lip service. Without action, resolutions are of no avail. Global accords prohibiting torture and upholding human rights can not help prisoners of conscience ill-treated by the dictatorial regime. It is time to pay heed to the cries of agony.

* Zin Linn - A former political prisoner is a writer –journalist in exile. He is an executive member of the Burma Media Association which is affiliated with Reporters Sans Frontiers based in Paris.


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03.07.2007: Mizzima - Prominent HIV activist released

On 2 July 2007, following international concern and pressure, the Burmese junta released prominent HIV activist Phyu Phyu Thin, who was arrested for participating in a prayer vigil held for pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi ahead of the 27 May review of her house arrest.

Because to voice support for Aung San Suu Kyi, whom the junta deems a "national security threat", is to invite arrest and torture in the secretive state, political activists thought calls for her release could be channelled through prayer gatherings, pitting the authority of religion against that of the junta, in the predominantly Buddhist nation.

However, Phyu Phyu Thin, 34, who is also a member of Aung San Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy (NLD) political party, was arrested from her house on 21 May after joining one such prayer procession.

Fifty-one other activists arrested along with Phyu Phyu Thin were released on 27 June. Authorities gave no explanation as to why she was arrested and held longer than the others.

Phyu Phyu Thin had begun a hunger strike on 19 June, demanding a fair trial or immediate release. However, she resumed taking her meals after five days when the authorities promised to release her.

NLD spokesperson U Myint Thein earlier said that Phyu Phyu Thin might have been detained longer as she was still weak from the hunger strike.

The NLD was denied the right to govern the country despite winning the 1990 general elections by a landslide margin.


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02.07.2007: RSF/BMA - Joint call for U Win Tin's release on 18th anniversary of his arrest

"We are outraged that the Burmese authorities continue to detain a journalist this old, especially as he is ill and he has served almost all of his sentence," the press freedom organisation said. "Their refusal to free him, although this is allowed under Burmese law, is a sad example of the military regime's cynicism."

Since his arrest, U Win Tin has been sentenced successively to three, ten and seven years in prison in trials held secretly inside Insein, the prison where he has spent a total of 18 years. A member of the opposition National League for Democracy, he is the only one of the NLD leaders arrested in 1989 who is still being held.

A political columnist and art critic, U Win Tin was one of the advisers of the head of the NLD, Nobel peace laureate Aung San Suu Kyi.

Health

U Win Tin has been allowed special conditions of detention since 6 November 2002 but he has been weakened physically by all the years in prison.

Despite the regime's repeated attempts to get him to abandon his political loyalties, U Win Tin has stuck to his pro-democracy stance.

But his health has suffered. He has had two heart attacks and had to be operated for a slipped disc in 1995. He has lost most of his teeth and has to wear a surgical collar because of an inflammation of the vertebrae. Ever since his arrest, he has often had to be transferred to the prisoners wing of Rangoon general hospital for treatment.

Campaigning for U Win Tin's release

Reporters Without Borders and the Burma Media Association have undertaken many initiatives aimed at obtaining his release. In 2006, the two organisations addressed a formal appeal to the Burmese prime minister, Gen. Soe Win. They also sent an appeal to the main Burmese embassies accompanied by a petition for his release with more than 5,000 signatures.

In 2004, U Win Tin's name appeared on a list of detainees who were about to be releases. Then deputy foreign minister Kyaw Thu told Reuters he was on a list of 4,000 prisoners who were in the process of being freed. "We would not have decreed it if we did not really have the intention of doing it," he said. "If we do not keep our word, we will just come under more pressure, not only from our side but also from the west."

After his release failed to materialise, Reporters Without Borders and the Burma Media Association appealed to the European Union on 6 November 2006 to maintain its sanctions against Burma's leaders.

An appeal for resistance against the military regime was issued by U Win Tin from his cell on his 77th birthday on 12 March.

U Win Tin's sponsors

His exemplary fight for freedom of expression has been a factor in the decisions by many news media to adopt him as an imprisoned journalist.

France

TF1, Le Journal du Dimanche, Télérama, Gavroche, Le Monde, Les Dernières Nouvelles d'Alsace, BFM, ARTE, Humanisme, Azur FM, Le Peuple, Paris Normandie, DESS de journalisme de l'Institut Français de Presse, Maires de France, Agriculture horizon, France 3 Sud Languedoc-Roussillon, Romans Magazine, L'Humanité, Amiens Métropole, Assas, Le Courrier Picard, Photographie.com and France Bleu Gard Lozère

Spain

Cadena Ser, Tiempo, Perfiles, TV3 Catalunya, Asociación de la Prensa de Cádiz, Agencia Cover, El Correo Español/El Pueblo Vasco, El Triangle and Cuatro TV

Canada

Ottawa Sun, Echos Vedettes, Points chauds (Télé-Québec), McGill Daily, Radio Canada, The Star Phoenix and Bernier et Cie (Radio Canada)

Belgium

Le Soir magazine, Le Soir, BEL-RTL, Le Vif/L'Express, RTBF-TV, RTL-TVI, Vers l'avenir, Fun Radio and Enjeux Internationaux

Sweden

Kommunalarbetaren


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02.07.2007: WAPC - The World Association of Press Councils for the immediate release of U Win Tin

The World Association of Press Councils (WAPC) joins with the Burma Media Association and other international organizations in calling for the immediate release of U Win Tin by the Burmese government.

Mr. U Win Tin has spent 18 years,on trumped up charges, as a political prisoner of the Burmese military regime. He is 78 years old and in poor health. He refuses to gain release from prison by renouncing political activity, stating: "Two prison officers asked me at a special meeting last week whether I would resume political activities if I were released. I told them that I will definitely do so since it is my duty as a citizen to strive for democracy."

WAPC Secretary General, Chris Conybeare says:” Mr. U Win Tin is essentially in jail for being a journalist and an advocate for democracy. He is a man of high courage and serves as an inspiration for all who struggle for freedom of expression. We demand his immediate release from prison.”

The WAPC is an international association of press and media councils, dedicated to promoting high standards of journalistic ethics and the basic right of all persons to freely communicate.


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02.07.2007: BMA - Burmese Journalists demand release of 78-year old journalist U Win Tin after 18 years in prison

The Burma Media Association (BMA) called on authorities in Burma today to immediately release distinguished journalist U Win Tin, who has spent 18 years of a 20-year sentence in prison on fabricated anti-government charges.

U Win Tin, who is the country's longest serving political prisoner, was originally imprisoned in 4 July 1989. He has been sentenced three times, each time while incarcerated. At present he is serving a seven-year sentence following a testimony he sent to the UN about the human rights violations of political prisoners. 

The journalist recently told a friend who is allowed to visit him: "Two prison officers asked me at a special meeting last week whether I would resume political activities if I were released. I told them that I will definitely do so since it is my duty as a citizen to strive for democracy."

U Win Tin has constantly refused to sign a document promising to give up political activities as a condition of his release. 

The journalist has had two heart attacks and has suffered from high blood pressure, diabetes and an inflammatory disease that affects spine. His poor state of health was exacerbated by ill treatment in prison, which has included torture, inadequate access to medical treatment, solitary confinement without bedding, and being deprived of food and water for long periods of time.

Even though he is checked twice a month by a prison doctor, he is dependent on the help of his friends who regularly bring him medication and food. 

“No sensible person can accept such cruelty of this military regime which has imprisoned a sick 78-year-old man for 18 years. According to prison laws he has been eligible for early release since July 2006,” said BMA secretary Son Moe Wai. “We call for him to be freed at once.”

The journalist was awarded the UNESCO/Guillermo Cano World Press Freedom Prize, the World Association of Newspapers' Golden Pen of Freedom Award and Reporters Without Border/Foundation de France Prize for his efforts to defend and promote freedom of expression.


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