Thank you.
The hopes that Myanmar's first democratically elected civilian government in decades would better protect freedom of the press and freedom of speech in the country have not materialized. Instead, we found that over the past almost three years, there's been a serious decline in freedom of the press in the county, with increasing numbers of journalists being arbitrarily arrested, detained and imprisoned under a range of vaguely worded and broad criminal laws. Certain topics appear to be particularly risky for journalists to cover, such as abuses by the Myanmar military, particularly in the ethnic areas, allegations of corruption by government officials, or criticism of government officials, the military or Myanmar's ultra-nationalist movement. All of these have resulted in the arrest of journalists trying to report on those issues in the country.
In the most well-known case, two Reuters reporters, Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo, were sentenced to seven years in prison under Myanmar's Officials Secrets Act, in apparent retaliation for uncovering a massacre in the village of Inn Din in Rakhine state.
That case is only one of the many cases of journalists who have been arrested in Myanmar in the last few years. According to the civil society group Athan, up until September 2018, at least 43 journalists have been arrested in Myanmar since the NLD-led government took power. These arrests have had a serious chilling effect on journalists working in the country.
I will give you a few examples of the use of criminal laws against journalists in Myanmar.
Lawi Weng of The Irrawaddy and two reporters from the Democratic Voice of Burma were arrested after they went to an area controlled by an ethnic armed group to cover a drug-burning ceremony being performed by that group. They were doing their jobs; they were reporting the news. As they were returning to Yangon, they were arrested and accused of violating Myanmar's Unlawful Associations Act, which is a very broad law that's used to punish anyone viewed as having any contact with one of Myanmar's many ethnic armed groups. They were detained for two months before the case was ultimately dropped after the attack that took place in Rakhine state in 2017.
While the case was ultimately dropped, the message it sent was very clear. Reporters who travel to conflict areas and reporters who have contact with and report on ethnic armed groups risk arrest in the country.
Myanmar's multiple laws making defamation a criminal offence are also being used against journalists. Use of defamation laws against journalists has a serious chilling effect on freedom of the press.
In just one example, Swe Win, the co-founder of the news service Myanmar Now, has been on trial for the past 18 months, accused of criminally defaming the ultra-nationalist monk Wirathu. After Wirathu issued a statement applauding the murder of lawyer U Ko Ni, Swe Win assigned a reporter to look into how that statement should be analyzed under criminal law and under the rules of Buddhism. In the article that the reporter wrote, he quoted a monk saying that Wirathu should be defrocked because he was condoning murder.
That article was sent out by Myanmar Now, Swe Win put it on his personal Facebook page, and he was criminally charged with defaming the monk Wirathu. For the last 18 months, he's had to travel 630 kilometres each way to Mandalay every other week for the trial that is ongoing, with a serious disruption to his personal and his professional life. He said that in his view, that case has put a serious a serious fear in all newsrooms for covering issues related to the Buddhist monks and the nationalist movement in the country.
In at least two cases, journalists have been arrested for what was clearly satire. The Voice Daily published a satirical review of a movie that had been produced by the military and shown on national television. For that, the editor was arrested for defaming the military.
The editor of a small journal in Tanintharyi is currently on trial for defaming a regional administrator in a satirical article about a local election.
The results of all these arrests and detentions is a climate of fear in Myanmar, particularly among local journalists. A local journalist told me that local journalists feel much more vulnerable than international journalists. They're living in the country and they don't have the support networks that international journalists have. He said, “For us as local journalists, there is no guarantee of our work security or our safety.”
Activists and ordinary citizens are also being arrested for speaking out on issues like military abuses and corruption. People have been arrested for telling the media about a military strike on a church in Kachin state, for calling for help for trapped civilians during a conflict between the Tatmadaw and the Kachin Independent Army, for making allegations of corruption against the regional minister, and even for telling what it was like to be a child soldier in Myanmar's military.
Aung Ko Htway is currently serving a two-year sentence for giving an interview to Radio Free Asia, talking about his experiences as a child soldier in Myanmar.
The prosecution of people speaking about these sorts of issues makes it much more challenging for journalists to get stories, to report on these very important issues in the country—military abuses, corruption, child soldiers—because it makes people afraid to talk and because it makes the journalists much more fearful about reporting on these subjects.
Another threat facing journalists who report on sensitive subjects is—