(RSF/IFEX) – The following is a 25 May 2000 RSF press release: May 1990 – May 2000 Ten years of contempt for press freedom in Burma On 27 May 1990 the National League for Democracy (NLD), led by Nobel Peace Prize laureate Aung San Suu Kyi, won more than 80% of the vote in the […]
(RSF/IFEX) – The following is a 25 May 2000 RSF press release:
May 1990 – May 2000
Ten years of contempt for press freedom in Burma
On 27 May 1990 the National League for Democracy (NLD), led by Nobel Peace Prize laureate Aung San Suu Kyi, won more than 80% of the vote in the legislative elections. But the ruling military junta, in power since 1988, has never recognised the party’s victory.
Reporters Sans Frontières (RSF) condemns those ten years, during which freedom of speech has been spurned in Burma. The military junta has deprived the Burmese people of any objective news and has violated the rights of Burmese and foreign journalists to practise their profession freely. Torture, severe jail sentences, murder, threats and censorship are commonplace, and Burma is still the country that is keeping the most journalists in prison.
Four journalists have died in jail
During the past ten years, four journalists have died at the hands of the Burmese security services. The methods used by the Burmese army and police have frequently been condemned by human rights organisations. Cruelty, physical and psychological torture, rape and extra judiciary executions are common practice against dissidents and members of rebel movements.
Journalists have not been spared by these serious violations of human rights. In 1991, Ne Win and U Ba Thaw died in jail. Despite denials by the authorities, torture and appalling conditions were probably responsible for their deaths. On 14 May 1991 the Rangoon authorities told a press conference that Ne Win, correspondent of the Japanese daily Asahi Shimbun, had died in prison from cyrrhosis of the liver. He had been held since 24 October 1990. The military accused him of sympathising with the opposition, but he was never formally charged or tried. A month later, U Ba Thaw (also known as Maung Thaw Ka), a press cartoonist and member of the NLD’s executive committee, died in jail – from a heart attack, according to the authorities.
Seven years later, in August 1998, U Saw Win, editor of the daily Botahtaung, died of a heart attack in Tharrawady prison. Relatives said he had not been receiving the medical treatment he needed. U Saw Win had been sentenced to ten years’ imprisonment in 1990.
In September 1999, U Thar Win, a photographer with the government newspaper Kyemon, died at a secret service detention centre. Arrested along with about ten colleagues, he was reported to have been beaten up. The newspaper had just published – by mistake, according to several sources – a photograph of General Khin Nyunt, the junta’s strongman, alongside a report headlined “The world’s biggest crook”. The authorities claimed that U Thar Win had also died of cirrhosis of the liver.
The authorities have never given the journalists’ families precise and credible information about the circumstances of their deaths. One thing is certain: in several published documents the United Nations’ special rapporteur on Burma has said that torture is common at Insein and Tharawaddy prisons, where three of the four journalists were held.
Some 20 journalists imprisoned
On 17 October 1990 Ohn Kyaing, also known as Aung Wint, a journalist with Hanthawathi and a member of parliament for the NLD, was arrested by soldiers for condemning the bloody repression of demonstrations by Buddhist monks in Mandalay in August 1988. He was sentenced on the same day to seven years in prison for “writing and distributing seditious leaflets” and “writing an anti-government article”. On 15 May 1991 he was sentenced to a further ten years under article 5, sections (a), (b) and (j), of the emergency law.
12 journalists are currently jailed in Burma. Twenty have been jailed in the last ten years. Most of them were given severe sentences simply for practising their profession and supporting the NLD. Arrests, violent interrogation, degrading prison conditions, torture of male prisoners, humiliation and summary trials are the methods used by the security services and military courts to gag opposition journalists. Those who have tried to give the United Nations’ special rapporteur information about prison conditions have been given additional terms. This happened to Myo Myint Nyein, who was sentenced to an extra seven years in March 1996 for passing on documents to the special rapporteur, particularly about ill-treatment at Insein jail.
On 25 May 2000, 12 journalists were in prison in Burma: U Sein Hla Oo, arrested in August 1994 and sentenced to 14 years, Soe Thein, arrested in May 1996 under article 10 (a) of the State Protection Law, U Thein Tan, arrested in 1990 and sentenced to a total of ten years, U Tha Ban, sentenced to seven years in March 1997, U Win Tin, arrested in July 1989 and later sentenced to 15 years, Sonny (Khin Maung Win), arrested in June 1997, Myo Myint Nyein and U Sein Hlaing, arrested in September 1990 and sentenced to a total of 14 years, U Ohn Kyaing, jailed and sentenced to 17 years in 1990, Daw San San Nweh, arrested in August 1994 and sentenced to ten years, Cho Seint, arrested and sentenced to seven years in 1996, and Aung Zin Min, arrested and sentenced to seven years in 1996.
Media under the junta’s boot
In 1988 the Burmese press, which was spearheading the struggle for democracy, enjoyed a revival of freedom. From August onwards, hundreds of publications began appearing in the streets of Rangoon. Journalists wrote about the activities of the opposition, cartoonists poked fun at the military regime and – even more astonishing – the state media referred to pro-democracy demonstrations. Rigid propaganda melted away and the press, often produced with scant resources, broke free of its chains. On 18 September a coup d’état by the SLORC (the original name of the military junta) put an end to these new freedoms. Newspapers were banned and their staff were hunted by the police. Official propaganda once again took precedence, extolling the virtues of the Tatmadaw, the Burmese army.
The repression of the opposition, started in September 1988, left more than 3,000 dead, and was stepped up further after May 1990. The media were also victims of SLORC brutality, with publications banned, reporters sacked and arrested, foreign journalists thrown out of the country, and so on. At least four dailies and two news magazines were closed down, not to mention the many home-produced publications that had flourished briefly during the revival of freedoms.
Only the Burmese-language programmes broadcast by the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), Voice of America, Radio Free Asia and Democratic Voice of Burma (DVB), plus a very few foreign newspapers from China and Thailand, enable the Burmese to escape from official propaganda. A few dissident publications produced abroad are distributed secretly, or in very restricted circles. People sometimes pay dearly for reading or listening to banned media. On 19 January 2000, 70-year-old U Than Chaum was sentenced to two years in jail for having a radio tuned to the Voice of America’s Burmese-language programmes in the tea rooms he owns in She-boo, northern Burma.
Scandalous laws against freedom of expression
In 1990 the SLORC began stricter enforcement of legislation against the media. Using laws adopted during the dictatorship of General Ne Win, such as the 1962 press law which introduced the Press Scrutiny Board (PSB), the official body responsible for censorship, the junta kept news under strict control. The law also enables anyone working for a publication that contains “inaccurate ideas” to be sentenced to up to seven years in prison.
Law no. 5/96, which came into force in June 1996, allowed the army to pass jail sentences of up to 20 years on anyone writing or passing on information “endangering state security, social peace and the superiority of law and order”.
Also in 1996, the junta promulgated two laws stepping up censorship: one on “the development of computer science” and another on “television and video”. Both provided for heavy sentences for the offence of using electronic media to transfer “unauthorised information”. Computer owners were required to have a licence. In January 2000, the state-run MPT (Myanmar Posts and Telecommunications) introduced new regulations covering use of the Internet which banned the transfer of political news and comment and “information harmful to the government”. Offenders face up to 15 years in prison.
No criticism of the army or the junta is tolerated. The government aims to control journalists right down to the words they write: after changing the name of the country and its cities by decree in 1989, “democracy” and “human rights” were struck off the list of officially permitted vocabulary. It is also forbidden to mention the names of jailed or exiled writers and journalists, and to publish their work. A prime example is the writing of Daw San San Nweh, which has been banned since she was first arrested in 1989.
The international media: “enemies of Burma”
On the eve of the elections of 27 May 1990 the Burmese authorities gave way to international pressure and granted 61 visas to allow foreign journalists to cover the poll. But reporters from the American dailies The New York Times and The Washington Post, the BBC and All India Radio had their visa requests refused.
Since then many foreign journalists have been described by the Rangoon authorities as “enemies of Burma”, and at least 15 have been expelled. In April 2000 Jean-Claude Buhrer of the French daily Le Monde was refused a tourist visa by the Burmese embassy in Thailand. An embassy official told him his name was on a blacklist of reporters barred from entering the country because he had published “hostile articles”, particularly after Burma was condemned by the United Nations Commission on Human Rights a few weeks earlier. In 1990 the journalist had been expelled from Rangoon.
Burmese correspondents of foreign media are victims of repression too. Ne Min, a lawyer and stringer for the BBC, was kept in jail for eight years. The junta also puts pressure on the foreign correspondents of international news agencies. In July 1996 General Aye Kyaw, the Burmese information minister, summoned correspondents whom he accused of being “unpatriotic” and threatened them with sanctions. At the time the Foreign Correspondents’ Club in Rangoon had only one foreign member, the Chinese representative of the official Xinhua news agency.
Some Burmese officials do not hesitate to threaten to kill foreign journalists. For example, in an article that appeared in a government publication in May 1990 under the pen name of Bo Thannami, information minister U Soe Nyunt threatened that reporters who failed to respect “journalistic ethics and the rules of sovereignty” would be killed. He referred in particular to Bertil Lintner, a reporter with the news magazine Far Eastern Economic Review, who had been investigating guerrilla movements.
Recommendations
Reporters Sans Frontières calls on the Burmese military junta to:
-release, immediately and unconditionally, the 12 journalists jailed for exercising their right to freedom of speech, which is guaranteed by Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights,
-ban the use of torture and ill-treatment in prisons, interrogation centres and police stations,
-stop using confessions obtained under torture as “evidence” at trials,
-respect international standards concerning fair trials (allowing the defendant the services of a lawyer, allowing appeals, notifying the defendant of charges, etc.),
-repealing laws that restrict press freedom, such as the Printers and Publishers Registration Law of 1962, which officially introduced censorship, the Television and Video Law and the Computer Science Development Law of 1996, which allow drastic censorship of broadcasters and electronic media, the Emergency Provisions Act of 1950, used to sentence journalists to heavy jail terms, the Official Secrets Act of 1923 and the State Protection Law of 1975, emergency laws which give the military sweeping powers,
-sign and ratify the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, article 19 of which guarantees freedom of speech,
-allow a delegation from Reporters Sans Frontières to go to Burma.
Reporters Sans Frontières calls on member countries of the Association of South-East Asian Nations (ASEAN) to:
-reconsider Burma’s membership in the association and to demand an improvement in fundamental freedoms in the country, or face sanctions,
-provide material assistance to Burmese media in exile which defend democratic values.
