POLITICS, ECONOMICS & SANCTIONS
THE SANCTIONS DEBATE
320
In November 1999, the UN International Labour Organization took the
unprecedented step of recommending sanctions against Myanmar, be-
cause of its use of civilians for forced labour and treacherous tasks of por-
terage for the military (including serving as ‘human landmine detectors’).TESTING TIMES FOR THE MEDIAMedia censorship in Myanmar has been routine since the military takeover in 1962,
giving locals years of practice of using gossip, short-wave radios, satellite-TV dishes and
computers to fi nd out what their government doesn’t want them to know. Local journal-
ists have also become braver at pressing the envelope of what is permitted. In early
2011 the government signalled that censorship would be eased, with coverage of issues,
including health, technology and entertainment, no longer requiring pre-publication
approval by the Press Scrutiny and Registration Division (PSRD).
The following is an overview of Myanmar’s main media outlets:Print
To get a sense of what passes for news, thumb through the English version of the New
Light of Myanmar, which features generals’ visits to plants and monasteries on the front
page and little else of interest inside. The English-language weekly The Myanmar Times
is a bit bolder, but just as friendly to the government; its former editor and co-owner,
Australian Ross Dunkley was found guilty of assault and immigration off ences in June
2011, a verdict he is set to appeal.
Neither of these papers is the only source of printed news for locals, who have ac-
cess to over 150 privately owned newspapers and magazines. Many news magazines
are weeklies because the current bureaucracy involved in submitting all articles to the
PSRD makes daily publication practically impossible.
Editors have not been averse to publishing stories they know will have consequences.
Reporters Without Borders noted that following Aung San Suu Kyi’s release at least 10
publications were suspended for periods of one to three weeks for according, in the
words of the government censor, ‘too much importance’ to the story. There’s concern
that the proposed shift to a more informal Chinese-style of censorship might cause
editors to become more cautious about publishing such news at all, as they will become
personally responsible for the articles.TV & Radio
There are three free-to-air TV channels (MRTV, Myawady TV and MRTV-3), but many locals
prefer to get their news from overseas radio broadcasts by the BBC’s World Service, VOA
(Voice of America) and RFA (Radio Free Asia; http://www.rfa.org) or from satellite-TV channels
such as BBC World, CNN and Democratic Voice of Burma (DVB; http://www.dvb.no), whose
brave video journalists (VJs) risk imprisonment to fi lm events in Myanmar and smuggle
them out of the country. It’s believed that there are over 10 million daily viewers of DVB in
Myanmar (we saw the channel screened in the lobby of one hotel on our research trip) and
the work of DVB’s VJs is covered in the Oscar-nominated documentary Burma VJ.Internet
In 2009 the Committee to Protect Journalists (www.cpj.org) ranked Myanmar as
the worst country in the world in which to be a blogger, citing, among others, the case of
Maung Thura, who is serving a 59-year prison term for circulating video footage after Cy-
clone Nargis in 2008. Internet cafes face strict operating rules, and many sites, including
that of Lonely Planet, are blocked; see p 363 for details on how people get around this.
Despite the dangers, the internet is an increasingly popular and important means of
news and communication in Myanmar. One of the most fascinating events we attended
during our research in the country was Barcamp Yangon (www.barcampyangon.org), a
user-generated conference on all things related to IT and the internet. Over two days,
some 4700 people of all ages attended the event, during which topics such as blogging,
computer coding and security were openly discussed.