[Journalism has been outlawed in all
but name since the coup, with reporters and editors fleeing the country or
leading double lives to survive]
By Guardian reporter in Bangkok
For a while, the threat of
foreigners being seized at the airport by Myanmar’s military was real, but
after watching international reporters exit the country safely in April, the
Michigan native was more worried about turbulence.
He had arrived in Myanmar two years
before, when the country was filled with hope for its fledgling democracy. He
was leaving at a time of violence and dread induced by a military coup. But
Fenster, who kept a low profile editing stories for Frontier Myanmar, was excited to
reach Chicago and surprise his parents, while continuing his role as the
managing editor of the celebrated outlet.
Airport staff handed him Covid-19
protective gear – complete with gown and hairnet – and he messaged his wife,
Juliana Silva, 37, at 9.16am, promising to take a silly selfie. Six minutes
later came a rushed text: security forces were taking him away.
“Not joke,” he wrote. “Theyll take
fone soon.”
After three more unfinished
messages, his side went silent. Silva has
not been able to contact him since. “We could never imagine this would
happen to him,” Silva says. “These 11 days without any news have been a
nightmare.”
Many Myanmar journalists are in
hiding or have managed to flee the country although most continue to cover the
junta’s crimes, which include the killing of at least 842 civilians, according
to activist group the Assistance Association for Political Prisoners. Since Min
Aung Hlaing seized power, Reporters Without Borders has recorded the arrest of
86 journalists and, as of 26 May, 49 of them are still detained.
Aung Kyaw of the Democratic Voice
of Burma (DVB) and Zaw Zaw, a freelance reporter for Mizzima, were the most
recent journalists to be sentenced. A court inside a prison in southern Myanmar
jailed them to two years for incitement and spreading false news on Wednesday. Mizzima
said Zaw Zaw was one of six of its staff arrested since the coup.
Fenster is being held at Yangon’s
Insein prison, a complex infamous for torture that has filled with dissidents
since the military
seized power from an elected government on 1 February. He has not been
allowed to see a lawyer or any visitors, including consular officers.
When Bryan Fenster, 39, was told
about his brother’s detention, “the absolute worst part was having to call my
mom and dad”, he said. “I intentionally just kept it to myself for 10 minutes.
I could picture them getting out of bed, getting coffee – that was 10 minutes
less they had to know.”
Fenster was attempting to leave a
country where journalism has been outlawed in all but name. Reporters were
jailed for doing their job under Aung San Suu Kyi’s ousted administration, but
the regime of dictator Min Aung Hlaing has choked the free press so much that
media members fake other jobs to conceal their occupation.
Banning two independent news
channels was among the general’s first actions, followed by a warning to local
media not to use “incorrect words” such as coup and referring to the military
as a “junta” or “regime”. Soon after, the regime revoked the publishing
licences of five Yangon-based media outlets and more across the country.
Soldiers raided newsrooms, including Kamayut Media, whose co-founder Nathan
Maung – the other US citizen in Insein prison – was
arrested in a raid on 9 March. He has reportedly been tortured.
Maung founded a weekly newspaper
for Burmese migrants in Thailand. He later moved to the US, where he studied at
North Carolina State University and went on to found Kamayut Media in 2012 with
two friends.
The United States on Thursday
reiterated its concern over the detention of Fenster and Maung, and called
again for their release. A state department spokesman, Ned Price, said consular
officers had conducted a virtual visit with Maung on 24 May and had sought to
visit Fenster but the junta had not granted access.
Safety is not guaranteed even for
those journalists who do manage to flee. Three DVB reporters who illegally
crossed into Thailand face
deportation after a court sentenced them to a one-year probation
period and fined them 4,000 baht ($128) each, Nadthasiri Bergman, a lawyer with
the Human Rights Development Foundation, said.
The trio’s lives could be in danger
if they are sent home, said the lawyer – a possibility understood well by
experienced reporters such as Moe Myint, 32, who stopped sleeping at home on
day one of the coup. Already on the military’s radar because of an interview
with an ethnic rebel in 2020, he says his worst nightmare is to be kidnapped by
soldiers at night, tortured to death, and then his wife to be called to collect
the corpse.
“The military or any ruling
political party in Myanmar regard journalists as their enemies, not the fourth
pillar of democracy,” said Moe Myint, who fled Yangon after the office of
Mizzima, one of his employers, was raided on 9 March.
While his wife and two-year-old son
sheltered elsewhere in Myanmar, Moe Myint joined another reporter on a tense
journey to territory held by the Karen National Union (KNU), an ethnic armed
group fighting for more autonomy on the border with Thailand.
He shaved his head and wore
spectacles, slipping past military checkpoints until they reached the region in
late March. A month later, he left for an undisclosed location – just days
before the military, known as the Tatmadaw, deployed deadly airstrikes where he
had stayed in an apparent response to a KNU ground attack. Back in Yangon, his
apartment was raided on 1 May.
“My mother was alone at home,” he
said. “Armed soldiers destroyed the front door and searched through some
documents, but they couldn’t find anything because we had already moved them.”
As a counter to the military’s
North Korea-esque propaganda, Moe Myint says local outlets have come to rely
heavily on freelancers and citizen journalists – and should pay them
accordingly. The regime has reverted to the isolation seen during the decades
of military dictatorship from 1962 to 2011, reintroducing a censorship board
and a press council of junta affiliates, he says. “Further repression and the
darkest days of Myanmar media are coming,” he added.
‘A gang of thieves and murderers’
This view is shared by Cherry
Htike, 39, executive editor of Tachileik news agency, an outlet based in Shan
state and which is banned by the junta. Her team reports daily on the
crackdowns, the bombings and other vital local information, but they pay a heavy
price. Soldiers stalk them, hoping to catch a colleague off guard. They
succeeded on 13 May when a photojournalist was detained after returning from a
safe house to his own home.
“I worry for the safety of my team
Advertisers disappeared after the
coup, which the editor puts down to fear of military reprisals for associating
with the outlet. “We are using our emergency fund and some aid but I’m not sure
how long we can survive,” she said.
Now on the run, Cherry Htike
receives words of support from her US-based sister, a journalist who fled the
former regime in 2008. She is also wary of public sentiment, which, although
overwhelmingly opposed to the military since the coup, has previously turned
against independent reporters. Two Reuters journalists, for instance, were
labelled traitors by the majority of people – in line with the military’s
narrative – and jailed
in December 2017 for investigating the killing of 10 Rohingya Muslim
men and boys by security forces and Buddhist civilians in Rakhine state.
For the reporters who have chosen
to continue working from inside the country, life is a minefield of danger and
suspicion. A reporter, whose identity has been concealed due to the
sensitivities, expected the coup would be bad “but the situation has become the
worst it can be”, he said.
He saw the mass protests of
February in Yangon disintegrate into a bloodbath and
colleagues remove their press helmets to avoid being targeted by security
forces.
He moved his wife and young
daughter to a new neighbourhood, where he is pretending to be an IT technician.
He has swapped his jeans and sneakers for a traditional longyi to avoid
attention, and camera parts are hidden in his lunchbox when he tries to pass
security points into areas of resistance.
His wife quit her job at a
broadcasting studio after it was occupied by the Tatmadaw and now he is the
sole breadwinner, he says. His daughter looks set to miss another year of
school after the pandemic, because of violence and a boycott of the education
system under the junta.
“Everything has been messed up by
that crazy, stupid and shameless military coup,” he said. “Our lives are not
safe; we have to worry for each other much more than ever. The junta military
is no longer an army, it’s just a gang of thieves and murderers led by their
gangster, Min Aung Hlaing.”
Yet the journalist is determined to
stay in Myanmar and continue reporting. Other civilians are taking up arms with
the conviction that a hellish future – a full-scale civil war – is necessary to
make way for a brighter path: removing the military from power, once and for
all.
Whether imprisoned, in hiding or
leading double lives, the press in Myanmar is under no illusions. “Media here
will die if they keep ruling,” he says.
