News black-out in protest of jailed reporters
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Eleven Media and other local newspapers and journals printed blacked-out cover issues on Friday in protest against the jailing of journalists and the clampdown on media freedom.
Democratic Voice of Burma (DVB) reporter Zaw Pe was sentenced last week to one year in prison for trespassing and obstructing an official on duty when reporting a story about Japanese funded scholarships back in 2012.
“Ma Khine from Eleven Media was imprisoned last December. Now it’s the turn of a DVB reporter who was jailed this month. Unity reporters are still on trial. There is no media freedom,” said Than Htay, joint secretary of the Myanmar Journalists Network (MJN).
Ma Khine was jailed for three months in December last year for trespassing and “using abusive language” when reporting about judicial corruption. The CEO and four reporters of the Unity Journal weekly are still under detention and have been refused bail after being accused of violating state secrets under a colonial-era law in Magway Region.
Local news outlets, including Eleven Media, printed blacked-out front pages on Friday to protest against the jailing of reporters and the obstruction of press freedom. The Messenger daily said: “We condemn the fierce actions against journalists and the oppression of media freedom” on April 9.
The Mizzima daily, meanwhile, said: “Mizzima calls for freedom of the press”.
Likewise, the Mon-Tae-Nay (Sun at Noon) journal wrote: “We decry oppression of the media, including [the jailing of the] DVB reporter.”
During the former military junta, repression of the media and the imprisonment of journalists was commonplace. The relaxation of censorship and liberalisation of private media by the current reformist government has been widely praised internationally, despite the authorities still using old laws and methods to intimidate and silence the press.
The MJN expressed its condemnation of the imprisonment of Zaw Pe on April 9 and denounced the government’s attempts to control the media.
“Journalists have the right to report news freely for the sake of the people’s right to know information in accordance with the Media Law, which was approved on March 14,” said the MJN in a statement.
Despite a new media law that enshrines the right of journalists to collect and report information in the public interest, the government has been charging journalists under obscure laws in an attempt to intimidate them from doing their jobs.
