YANGON (Asia Times Online / Pacific Media Watch): Reforms in Myanmar are "dangling by a thread" because of the continual jailing and harassment of journalists, says a media researcher.
Journalist Elliot Brennan reported this week, in a guest column for the Asia Times Online, that more than 55 journalists were currently imprisoned, in "pre-detention trial", or facing charges for doing their jobs.
These include five reporters from the Unity Journal, including the paper's chief executive, who were sentenced last month to 10 years in jail each "for violating the 1923 State Secrets Act for publishing a report exposing an alleged secret chemical weapons factory".
Another 50 journalists who protested against the sentence have been charged with violating laws related to the right to assemble.
"A group of journalists at the Bi Mon Te Nay news journal are being held in pre-trial detention and face criminal charges that carry potential prison terms for publishing an activist group statement that said opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi had formed an interim government. They were initially charged with violating the more severe 1950 Emergency Act" Brennan reported.
While the government ended "pre-publication censorship" in 2012, and released those journalists who had been jailed by the military junta, "the once hopeful media reforms initiated in 2012 are now steadily being reversed", wrote Brennan.
The media harassment included Police Special Branch interrogations of editors and journalists two months ago.
"This has inevitably driven many editors and journalists towards more self-censorship. The Australian editor of the Myanmar Times, Ross Dunkley, requested his staff to refrain from publishing on the plight of the country's Muslims without his prior approval, according to a widely circulated leaked internal memo. The directive was made at a time the government had accused local media of inflaming deadly communal tensions" .
Elliot Brennan is a Non-Resident Research Fellow with the Institute for Security and Development Policy's Asia Programme in Sweden. He is also a Non-Resident Fellow at Pacific Forum-Center for Strategic and International Studies (USA) and the Southeast Asia Analyst for the Lowy Institute's Interpreter Blog. He is based in Southeast Asia.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 New Zealand Licence.
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