Myanmar military’s effort to silence independent media

By Tin Htar Swe OBE, Myanmar analyst and a former BBC Burmese Editor

On the morning of 1^st February 2021, citizens of Myanmar, a vibrant and promising young democracy, woke up to the news that their country was now back under military rule.

In the fourteen months since, its citizens have found themselves reliving the past era when the country was ruled by successive oppressive military regimes for six decades until 2010 when nascent democracy was introduced. Myanmar had been largely ruled by a military junta since independence from British rule in 1948. The country is now under its third military coup.

A crackdown on independent media and freedom of expression

Attacks on free press have intensified since the latest coup began. Three independent journalists from ethnic media organisations have been killed so far this year, according to Reporters Without Borders.

Less than two weeks after the regime came into power last year, the Law Protesting the Privacy and Security of Citizens (2017), or “Privacy Law”, was amended to allow the regime to conduct searches, seizures and arrests. These laws extended detention without judicial oversight to carry out broad surveillance and investigation activities that could intrude on individual privacy. The regime also amended the Electronic Transactions Law (2004) known as the “ET Law’’ to introduce a broad exception allowing confiscation of personal data, and arrest and detain individuals for online posting of content critical of the regime.

These amendments disproportionately affect independent media outlets, allowing the regime to easily detain and prosecute journalists. A number of media houses were forced to flee when their licenses to operate were rescinded by the regime. However, all the main independent media organisations such as Mizzima News, Democratic Voice of Burma (DVB), Irrawaddy News and Myanmar Now News have continued to operate in hiding and in exile to provide daily news coverage.

According to Reporting Asean, 122 journalists and media staff have been arrested as of March 31, 2022, with 48 still in detention; one died in custody. Out of those arrested, 22 journalists have been convicted. While some have been released, many are worried that they might be re-arrested under the various laws that restrict the freedom of speech.

The military has either directly or indirectly funded proxy accounts on various social media platforms in order to control the narrative around events.

“Soldiers are asked to create several fake accounts and are given content segments and talking points that they have to post,” Captain Nyi Thuta, who defected from the army to join rebel forces at the end of February, told the Reuters News Agency.

However, the military’s attempt to stop the information flow has failed as the exiled independent media is providing real time information on the country’s dominant social media platform Facebook.

“[M]any journalists are in hiding and those who are not in hiding are spending each night in different locations to avoid overnight raids.” 

According to Mizzima, their audience reach has doubled since the coup and it now stands at 27 million weekly. Readership of Irrawaddy Online News has also increased significantly.

The state-owned media which was aiming to transform into Public Service Media during the short-lived democratic transition has now resumed being the mouthpiece of the military under its control.

In 2012 the civilian turned military government ended the pre-publication censorship of media. Reporters and writers no longer needed to submit their work to the state censorship board before publication – the stringent rule that was applied to all aspects of the media for nearly 50 years.

The habits of censorship and self-censorship were ingrained and the mindsets were hard to change at the Ministry of Information.

A year later the government also allowed the privately owned newspapers to resume publication, and restrictions were lifted on 30,000 internet sites, allowing users unrestricted access to political content for the first time. However, the end of censorship law did not necessarily mean the end of censorship altogether. Many laws still existed under which journalists could be punished for writing material that angered or offended the government.

Officials also announced plans to transform the state-owned media Myanmar Radio and Television, MRTV, into an independent public service broadcaster.

A ‘Public Service Media Bill’ was tabled before parliament in 2014, which would allow MRTV and other state-owned media outlets to become more independent, but it was withdrawn in 2015 at the request of the Ministry of Information. The draft law needed to be reviewed, according to the then Minister of Information, but details over the length of the review period was far from transparent.

When the civilian government led by Aung San Suu Kyi came into power in 2016, it was expected that the transformation of state-owned media to public service media would be swift. BBC Media Action had already trained more than 300 MRTV journalists and organised management seminars for its senior editorial staff from 2012 – 2015. The training was not limited to technical skills, but also included editorial training in the values of independent reporting.

But an apparent attempt to transform MRTV into an independent public service broadcaster faced a serious setback under Aung San Suu Kyi’s government. The habits of censorship and self-censorship were ingrained and the mindsets were hard to change at the Ministry of Information.

In 2015, the Broadcasting Law was introduced to establish an independent Broadcast Council to regulate broadcasters, to ensure media plurality and to prevent excessive media cross-ownership. However, the implementing regulations, which are needed to put the Broadcasting law into practice, were only adopted in October 2020, after a delay of more than five years. A few months later, the army seized power which abruptly ended the evolution of media in Myanmar.

The situation of press freedom in Myanmar has therefore been worsening steadily since the February 2021 coup, and journalists and media workers are persecuted and silenced for doing their jobs. Hopes to establish public service media were raised when the civilian government was re-elected for a second term in November 2020. While Aung San Suu Kyi promised that her government would push for more democratic reforms in its second term, the military seized power before the new government was installed. If the military remains in power, public service media, for which pluralism is at the core of their remit, is a thorn in the military’s side.

Tin Htar Swe OBE is a Myanmar analyst and a former BBC Burmese Editor