Burmese Editor's Code: Winks and Little Hints
June 24, 2001
By SETH MYDANS
source : The Newyork times
BANGKOK, June 22 — The trick is in the presentation, said U Tin Maung Than, a Burmese writer and editor who played the game hard, bobbing and weaving, winking and nudging, honing his metaphors, comparisons and historical references until it all became too much and he fled here from Myanmar for safety.
Writing under censorship is an intricate and multilayered exercise that consumed Mr. Tin Maung Than. Sometimes you aim too low and the readers miss your point entirely, he said. Sometimes too high and the censors catch you.It is a game played by all independent-minded writers in the military dictatorship of Myanmar, the former Burma: the writer versus the censor. The stakes are high; at the worst, the penalty box is prison.
Daily newspapers in Myanmar are government-run outlets for turgid official propaganda. But there are also scores of independent magazines and newsletters, large and small, most of which confine themselves to gossip, sports and lifestyle features. Only a few try to push the boundaries of what is acceptable.
Mr. Tin Maung Than, 47, was the editor of Thint Bawa (Your Life), a monthly general interest journal that grew progressively sharper and more challenging as he himself became bolder and more self-critical of what he saw as his own passivity.Late last year, he sensed from growing hints that the authorities saw him as a political problem and that he was in danger. "Two or three years in prison is O.K.," he said in an interview here. "But more than 10 years, the cost is too high." With his wife, who is a doctor, and their two young children, he fled across the lightly patrolled border into Thailand, where he is waiting for paperwork to enter the United States. Though it finally became too much for him, it seemed clear in the interview that the duel with the censors fascinated Mr. Tin Maung Than. He became an expert at it.
In Burma, as in other repressive states, writing under censorship is an art form in itself, for both the writer and the clever reader. Many of its rules are universal. "You cannot criticize," Mr. Tin Maung Than said. "You have to give hints that you are being critical, that you are talking about the current system. The hints are in your choice of words and your tones and your composition. You use words with double meanings."
He wrote a simple story about a little boy who confronted the mayor of his town, demanding that he build a bicycle path. The hint was in the title: "About a 10-year-old Boy and About You and Me." He wrote about repression in the education system under British colonial rule. Readers were nudged to draw their own conclusions about the education system of today.He wrote about flag burning in the United States, ostensibly to criticize it but, between the lines, to give a glimpse of freedom.
"If we want to talk about fear, we cannot talk about fear in the political context," he said. "So we talk about children's fear and its impact on society. The key is that you have to give little hints that you are not really talking about children."
The enterprise can be as demanding on the readers as on the writers."It is a sort of work of art, and when you read a work of art you can interpret it in many ways," he said. "Only the keen readers who are interested in social issues activists and intellectuals will understand the meaning. But if you are a layman who is only interested in romantic novels, you will not understand."
The challenge is to get through to those keen readers without tipping off the censors, who work for the government's Press Scrutiny Board. "The censors are neither smart nor fools," he said. "They are regular guys. Sometimes they are not interested in their work. They get bored. Sometimes we intentionally make an article long so it will be boring for them to censor. But we have to strike a balance because we do not want to make it boring for the readers, too.
"Sometimes as an editor you have to select a very aggressive, very critical article.You know it will be censored. But you want to get another article passed. It's just like playing chess. Sometimes you move a pawn O.K., you lose it so that you can move another piece another way." Like chess, this can be an intimate sport. "I have personal relations with some censors," Mr. Tin Maung Than said. "I go to the cafe with them, like with other friends. Sometimes we appeal their decision, so we try to explain why it is acceptable." Sometimes, he said, a censor will ask for the reasons in writing so that he will have something to show his superiors.
Poetry can be especially trying for an editor, and so can poets. "For some poems," he said, "the censors demand a written explanation. So that's one of the editor's jobs. You cannot ask the poet to explain it `Oh, I am a poet, that's not my job' so it is up to the editor to explain it in an acceptable way." One of the difficulties is that an editor can never be sure what the censors will pounce on. A report on mosquitoes in the capital, Yangon, was censored. References to drought or poor crop yield are forbidden because they could arouse fears of price rises.Gibes about preferential treatment for officials — a room at a guest house, a seat on a train are unacceptable.
So are discouraging reports about the fate of national sports teams. Once, when the soccer team lost badly in the regional Tiger Cup, sportswriters were ordered to write only upbeat articles. So they wrote nothing. After another humiliating loss, all mention of the team was banned for several weeks from magazines and journals.
For Mr. Tin Maung Than, political journalism was an exploration of limits. A medical doctor and journalist, he became the editor of Thint Bawa in 1992 with the hope of examining the forbidden subject of democracy. His work evolved from carefully selected translations of foreign articles to increasingly daring writing that pushed against the boundaries.
For writers who are seen to have crossed the line into opposition, the punishment can be prison. Far more common, though, for the independent magazines, are more subtle penalties that have created an effective culture of self-censorship. The brilliance of the system is that it puts the onus on the publisher. The material is not submitted to the censors until the magazine has been printed.
If an article is deemed unacceptable, it must not only be removed but replaced in a new press run by material of an equivalent length so that readers do not see the traces of censorship.
If this happens or if an entire publication is barred the cost to the publisher can be enormous. And if these rules are not followed, publication can be suspended for six months."I have had an experience of 72 pages that I had to rip out," Mr. Tin Maung Than said, nearly one-third of an issue. Sometimes the reprinted publication must be submitted more than once.
Formally, a Western expert on the Burmese press said, writers and editors are not usually imprisoned for their journalistic work. But prison is still a very real threat. "They try to find other reasons for arresting you," the expert said. "They suggest that you have been having contacts with the underground opposition."One victim was Tin Moe, a prominent poet and opposition figure, who was imprisoned for three years when his work was circulated underground. He later fled the country. It is also easy for the authorities to use a blacklist to bar a writer from publication or even from any mention in print.
Mr. Tin Maung Than told the story of an innocuous recent article in which a writer described a dinner party he had attended. The article included the names of the guests, all nonpolitical laymen.One of the names was Ko Yu, coincidentally the same name as that of a writer and former opposition member who had died. "Even though he was dead and even though he was a different man," Mr. Thin Maung Than said, "the censor ordered that the name Ko Yu be deleted from the article."