Subcommittee on International Human Rights committee  There is an escalation of conflicts in border zones. As soon as there is some conflict, the newspapers lose editorial freedom. It’s even physically dangerous to publish anything the army would not want you to publish. It is only in the few areas where the population lives in peac

Subcommittee on International Human Rights committee  There are regional newspapers, but they are only distributed in certain peaceful zones. Any conflict zone where the army is active is not covered at all by the press.

Subcommittee on International Human Rights committee  I can say that the newspapers that are close to the government are more or less organs of propaganda. As for private newspapers, they work in a grey zone. As I said, there is a sword of Damocles hanging over their heads. Even if they publish an investigation based on information

Subcommittee on International Human Rights committee  Fine. The change is due to the fact that Ms. Aung San Suu Kiy had to ally herself with the military to hold on to power. Because of that, the army imposed its law and Ms. Aung San Suu Kiy and civil power gave in in that negotiation to keep power.

Subcommittee on International Human Rights committee  I don’t want to suggest that this is neocolonialism, but I think that Facebook uses small countries like laboratories. That is what I saw in Cambodia. At the end of 2017, Facebook put in place the “Explorer feed” functionality in Cambodia and in five other countries of moderate i

Subcommittee on International Human Rights committee  In Burma, social media obviously contributed to the repression of freedom of information. I think they also contributed to inciting the genocide. One could almost compare the role played by Facebook in Burma to the role played by the Radio Milles Collines in Rwanda. In 1994, just

Subcommittee on International Human Rights committee  Thank you for those two questions. Regarding the private press, we don’t really have any large corporations or powerful press magnates as there are in western countries or other Asian countries. We have, instead, small publications that basically depend on advertising and are mo

Subcommittee on International Human Rights committee  I should say that in Myanmar, the Internet equals Facebook, since that platform is the main door to the Internet for all of the users in Burma. There has been a large increase in the number of users in a few short years. I believe the number of users increased by a factor of 15 o

Subcommittee on International Human Rights committee  I’d simply like to make a comment. As in any religious movement, there are extremists and there are moderates. At this time however, the extremists are much more vocal than the moderates.

Subcommittee on International Human Rights committee  First there is the blackmail with respect to visas. Journalists' visas are very difficult to obtain. Foreign journalists who want to investigate in the country must generally resort to using tourist or business visas and must do their work very discreetly. Foreign journalists are

Subcommittee on International Human Rights committee  Firstly, I’d like to remind you that our mandate is to advocate for freedom of the press. Consequently, I would not like to venture too far into a field I don’t know well. However, I can say that the freedom of the citizen journalist is also very compromised. As Mr. Naing said, a

Subcommittee on International Human Rights committee  Thank you for caring about this issue. I head up the Asia-Pacific desk at Reporters Without Borders, a non-governmental organization whose mission is to defend freedom of information around the world. One of our main advocacy tools is the World Press Freedom Index, which we comp