How Myanmar's Military Junta Continues to Attack Press Freedom

In Myanmar, the military junta commandeered by the Tatmadaw continues to act with impunity toward members of the press. In the year since the coup d'état that saw the democratically elected members of the country's ruling party, the National League for Democracy (NLD), deposed, the Tatmadaw has engaged in a bloody campaign of "intimidation, censorship, arrests, and detentions of journalists" that has since escalated to killing those who have published reports chronicling the junta's abuses of power, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ).

According to Shawn W. Crispin, CPJ's Senior Southeast Asia Representative, military authorities abducted the journalist Pu Tuidim, who'd interviewed members of the anti-coup Chinland Defense Force, which has mounted its own campaign against the junta as part of its efforts to end the dictatorship and establish a federal union. Tuidim was summarily executed after soldiers confiscated his laptop and used him as a human shield in a live-fire combat zone. The murder followed the killings of other journalists, including an independent photographer who documented an anti-coup silent protest in Yangon and another who was killed in an artillery attack by military forces while reporting on the plight of the country's internally displaced population.

CPJ research shows that Myanmar is now the world's second-worst jailer of journalists, only ranking behind China. Several face charges under Article 505(a), which CPJ points out is "a vague anti-state provision that broadly penalizes incitement and the dissemination of 'false news' with maximum three-year prison sentences." The actual number of journalists jailed is likely much higher than CPJ research indicates because news organizations are reluctant to identify them for fear of reprisals.

Journalists in Myanmar continue to work in dangerous circumstances and face considerable difficulty doing their jobs while the Tatmadaw works to actively and violently suppress the country's pro-democracy movement. Journalists have become dependent on finding areas with Wi-Fi to continue doing their work after the military blocked mobile data nationwide last March, as recounted by John Padang, the founder and editor-in-chief of The 74 Media, a local news agency based in Myitkyina, Kachin State, who has been forced to write under a pseudonym for security reasons. Padang notes that he was one of the first journalists arrested after the military began its crackdown, and, though he was released without charge, he has been subjected to police surveillance.

Myanmar's legislature is looking to pass a measure that would prohibit the use of virtual private networks (VPNs) that Myanmar citizens have used to access banned websites and social media, an action that would hinder the ability of news outlets to report and post news, typically via Facebook. The legislation would also expand the junta's powers to access user data, ban content deemed unacceptable, and imprison anyone critical of the regime. "If passed, a near certainty without an elected legislature in place, the law will give the junta the legal tool it needs to roll back the press freedom gains achieved between 2012 and the coup, a period where hundreds of independent media outlets bloomed from the darkness of an earlier era of military dictatorship, when all broadcast media was soldier-controlled and all newspapers were forced to publish as weeklies to give censors time to cut their content," Crispin reports. Nay Phone Latt, a former NLD Yangon regional lawmaker, called the legislation "totally unacceptable," adding that the junta, which he referred to in his remarks as a "terrorist regime," has no authority to draft laws.

An analysis by Reporters Without Borders (RSF) estimates that at least 115 journalists have been arrested, 57 have been arbitrarily jailed, 14 convicted, and three killed in the year since the coup d'état. Myanmar is currently ranked 140th out of 180 countries in RSF's 2021 World Press Freedom Index, though that ranking is bound to decline further given that it was released before the country's biggest surge of violations of press freedom.