Burma news
source : ABC(15-02-02)
In Burma, every word and picture must pass the censors. So what’s it like to edit a weekly newspaper in Rangoon?
Burma's military government is notorious as one of the most oppressive and secretive regimes in Asia.Australian journalist Jayne Dullard recently returned from a year in Rangoon as editor of the Myannmar Times - and she says it was trying, vexing, frustrating, depressing - and worthwhile.
Jayne Dullard spoke with Asia Pacific's Peter Mares.
DULLARD: It's a twenty-four page, well I believe now 28-page weekly newspaper. There are two editions: one in English and one in Myanmar native language. The paper's owned through a joint venture, which is an Australian businessman by the name of Ross Dunkley and his partners, and a Burmese businessman, called Sonny Swe.
MARES: And is it independent of government?
DULLARD: It's independently owned. Its operation is not independent of course because it's subject to censorship.
MARES: How does the process of censorship actually work: do you have to submit every story to a government department for vetting or how does it work?
DULLARD: It's very up close and personal. I would finish sub-editing the stories by the reporters, which in itself given that they didn't speak terribly good English, which was quite an exhausting process, fax it off to what I used to call the 'war office', which was actually the Office of Strategic Studies within military intelligence to a man called Colonel Thein Swe who was the father of the newspaper's Burmese part-owner. A very, very interesting situation but one in fact which allowed the paper to exist, it wouldn't have happened otherwise.
He would read the stories, run them past his superiors and then he'd get back to me and say please delete 'paragraph 3', 'please delete this word', 'please delete this sentence', 'you must not run this story', that sort of thing. It was very trying, very vexing and frustrating and often quite depressing.
MARES: Prior to the Myanmar Times the owner of the publication, the Australian owner, Ross Dunkley was involved in a similar publication in Vietnam called the Vietnam Investment Review, and there they had problems not just with the content of stories or the words, but also often with photographs. Did you find that images could also be very controversial in Burma?
DULLARD: Yes, there was sort of two aspects to that: one was publishing photographs that they didn't like and most of the time it was because of some kind of cultural sensitivity.
One incident that I recall quite clearly was we had a photograph accompanying a feature about, I don't know, Myanmar cultural custom of some kind, and down the corner of the photo, quite small, was a woman carrying a basket on her head which is a common sight in the streets of the capital and across the country.
But the Colonel thought that that made the country look backward and poor so we weren't allowed to run it. And the other form of censorship of images sort of happened in reverse when we were told that we had to run a photograph, which happened I guess about maybe once a month we'd be told that we'd have to run a photograph of senior General Than Shwe, who's the number one in the State Peace and Development Council.
MARES: The military junta in Burma.
DULLARD: That's right and the Commander in Chief of all the armed forces. So that would happen sometimes.
And there was also very, very clear protocol about what sort of photograph of the senior political leaders we could use, and obviously a photograph which made any of them look silly or where part of their bodies or faces were obscured by someone else.
And if the three senior leaders were together in a photograph then it had to be number one, number two, number three, sort of from left to right.
MARES: They had to be in the right order?
DULLARD: That's right.
MARES: Editorially what were the no-go areas for your publication in Burma?
DULLARD: They were fluid, they changed over time and some of them that were no-go areas when I got there, for example mentioning Aung San Su Kyi's name was no longer a no-go area by the time that I left. Mentioning the National League for Democracy was a no-go when I arrived and by the time I left we were often referring to the party, although we weren't receiving and printing comments from party leaders.
If there were negotiations going on between the military government and for example the United States then we would not be allowed to publish anything which they thought was in some way critical of the United States.
At other times if they were feeling that the US was completely offside and they were feeling angry then we were ok to run those sorts of stories. Anything that degraded key cultural institutions was not allowed. We couldn't run stories for example of a Christian organisation that was rehabilitating drug users because it was Christian.
MARES: And not Buddhist?
DULLARD: That's right. They suggested that we concentrate on a Buddhist example of the same sort of program, which we did and then they said well no you can't run that because we do not like to talk about drugs because we do not have a drug problem here.
MARES: Is it worth the effort in Burma to put out a publication like this, or does it as some critics would argue simply add a gloss of respectability to what is one of the most repressive and authoritarian regimes in Asia?
DULLARD: I won't pretend that I don't think this is a very, very complex question to answer and it's one that I had to grapple with on an almost daily basis while I was over there.
Ultimately yes I think it's worthwhile, not just because it is something that's there that's tangible, that is giving people information, where before there was no information at all. That's really important, and it's easy when you come from a western democracy to sort of not take that as being important.
But if you've been starved of any kind of information for five decades then believe me what the Myanmar Times does is very significant. And the fact that the Burmese edition of the paper went from 4,000 to 12,000 copies a week in the first three weeks of its publication is very clear evidence of that.
But the other thing that makes the newspaper very important in my mind is that it gave us the reason and the means to train journalists, and that was actually one of my key responsibilities there, and that process was not only enormously personally satisfying and rewarding, but you know I think incredibly significant.
I mean there were no young journalists in that country, there were almost no journalists, those who had operated in the 50s and 60s were either deceased or in jail or living overseas. And we took a bunch of basically young kids and taught them how to think critically, to think analytically, to ask questions and to confront, and these are all things which are actually at direct odds with Burmese culture.
And some critics might say well you're imposing western ideals onto an eastern country, yes maybe. But if these are ways of thinking, ways of operating that can help promote a non-repressive form of government in that country then of course I have no qualms about it.