May 14: “It’s a shame to be a citizen of Burma in this Information Age”, pronounced a young Burmese journalist who is attending journalism training in Bangkok. “It’s time to expand enough space for freedom of expression.

The task must be ours, the newer generation”, he remarked as his professional colleagues elsewhere observed World Press Day.

Between 1948, the year Burma gained independence from Britain and 1962, the country enjoyed press freedom. The scene changed on March 2, 1962, when the military seized power. One of the early actions of the junta was nationalisation of all newspapers. It established a Press Scrutiny Board (PSB) to enforce strict censorship on all forms of printed matter – advertisements and obituaries including.

Burma’s most respected journalist U Win is languishing in jail for the last 18 years. He is 77 years old and suffers from a serious heart ailment. Yet at the Rangoon General hospital, he is confined to a 15 sq.m room. A former editor of the Hanthawadi daily, U Win Tin is also held in jail. He had earned the wrath of the regime with his report “Human Rights Abuses in the Military Regime’s Various Prisons” to the UN Special Rapporteur for Burma.

On March 7 this year, 65-years-old U Thein Zan posted on his fence a satirical article on the Junta rule. “Prices have shot through the roof and people are hit”, he wrote and immediately landed in jail. “You have incited public disorder”, the official decree said. Earlier in February, on 22nd to be precise, protests against price hike met with the same fate.
The only silver lining in their case is that they were released after a while. They were made to take a pledge that they would not carry out such protests in future.

On April 22, Htin Kyaw, along with seven others waved placards and chanted slogans against price rise, power shortages, and rising unemployment at the San-pya marketplace in Thin-gan-gyun Township in Rangoon Division. It was a rare show of public discontent. Kyaw staged solo protests earlier on February 22 and on March 22. Expectedly, these economic dissidents were quickly rounded up. They are still held in custody.

Martial law in the country forbids public gatherings. Over 3000 people have lost their lives staging peaceful demonstrations since 1988. Any effort at creating human rights’ awareness is fraught with danger. Take the case of Maung Maung Lay (37) and Myint Naing (40). Both work for the Human Rights Defenders and Promoters Organisation. On April 18 afternoon, Lay and Naing were attacked by the Junta popped vigilante group as they left Oatpon village in Ayeyarwaddy Division on their motor cycle after talking to the locals as a part of their HR awareness campaign. They are still in the hospital. According to eyewitnesses, senior members of the village administration, police and the officials of the Union Solidarity Development Association (USDA), were involved in the attack.

Amnesty International is concerned by reports of violent attacks on social activists in Burma. It keeps urging the ruling State Peace and Development Council (SPDC) to bring to book the guilty after a thorough and independent investigation. The appeal has been falling on deaf ears.

Two UN experts, Paulo Sergio Pinheiro (the Special Rapporteur on human rights in Myanmar) and Hina Jilani (the Secretary-General’s Special Representative on Human Rights Defenders), have voiced their deep concern over the attack on Lay and Naing. Like Amnesty, they also called for a thorough investigation. That was on April 25. Till date, the call has met with silence.

Needless to say, the present junta, SPDC, which seized power in September 1988, truthfully follows the footsteps of its predecessor in suppressing people’s rights and media freedom. Censorship is imposed in the name of national security. Any one found with pamphlets, books, magazines, cassettes or videotapes that appear even remotely to the ruling junta, is arrested and sentenced for anywhere between seven and twenty years.

As Daw Aung San Suu Kyi has once said, Burma is today a prison state. Many writers and poets, editors and publishers have been thrown into prison with or without pretext.

There is no independent radio, TV or newspaper. All media is under the military thumb. Public has no access to the Internet; the regime scrutinizes all outgoing e-mails.

State-owned Post and Telecommunications (MPT) is the country’s first Internet Service Provider (ISP); Bagan Cybertech, a semi-government organization is the second ISP. It is established by Dr. Ye Nai Win, son of former military intelligent chief Gen.Khin Nyunt.

Bagan Cybertech doubled monthly broadband rates with effect from July 2005. It also suspended the creation of new e-mail accounts ‘until further notice’. The ban was a sequel to the purge in the military intelligence.

Bagan founder Ye Naing Win was detained and the company was taken over by the military.

At present, Internet and e-mail service are strictly limited in Burma.
What contributes to such restrictions are high service rates and limited power connectivity.

Some privately owned journals and magazines are surviving despite strict censorship norms enforced religiously by the Press Scrutiny and Registration Division (PSRD).The publishers have to face all types of odds. Censor clearance is delayed for days. Some times permission is denied almost at the last moment. Publishing license can be cancelled any time. Over and above these difficulties, a would-be publisher has to bribe various authorities to get that elusive licence.

The list of topics that are taboo to the authorities is long and gets additions almost every day. All publication-related people, such as writers, journalists, poets, cartoonists, photographers, editors and publishers must submit their resumes to the Home Ministry and give an undertaking that they would sincerely follow the PSRD rules and regulations.

News relating poverty and stories about peoples’ economic hardships are not ‘fit’ for publication. Articles on socio-economic difficulties, natural disasters, ship wreck, train crash or plane crash and similar news pieces are usually not allowed to be reported. Similarly, politics is of bounds for the media and public talk.

Freedom of Press and Freedom of Assembly are closely interrelated.
Progress of Freedom of Expression depends on the progress of the Democratic Movement led by Aung San Suu Kyi, leader of the National League for Democracy (NLD) and Burma’s Nobel Peace Prize laureate. She has spent a large part of last eighteen years under house arrest in Rangoon and has been cut off with the outside world.

Today military regime is practicing absolutism over all aspects of freedom in Burma. Academic freedom is completely stifled by various suppressive laws and decrees. The junta has never tolerated any democratic opinion and dissent.

The laws most commonly used by the junta are the Emergency Provisions Act 1950, Unlawful Associations Act 1957, Printers and Publishers Registration Law 1962, and State Protection Law 1975. Each of these draconian laws provide for long periods of imprisonment. In addition are the systematic tortures and summary court trials.

Burmese have only one appeal to the international media and HR watch dogs. Keep up your support to the democratic movement against the military dictatorship. Also campaign vigorously for the release of over 1000 political prisoners, most of them are students, intellectuals, lawyers, doctors and journalists.

Minus Freedom of Expression, Burma will never become a free nation.

* Zin Linn - the author is a Burmese freelance journalist living in exile in Bangkok.

http://www.burmanet.org/news/2007/05/16/asian-tribune-footloose-in-burma-with-no-freedom-zin-linn/