Censorship rears its head in Myanmar

Censorship rears its head in Myanmar By Roger Hamilton-Martin

UNITED NATIONS - One year after the government officially struck down laws obstructing free press in Myanmar, a parliamentary bill could allow previous censorship practices to re-emerge. When Thein Sein's Union Solidarity and Development party government ended the last of the censorship laws in August last year, many hailed a new era of free expression and an end to the pressures placed on journalists over the previous half century.

Still, many journalists are concerned by the state of media reform in the country. Currently, a publishing bill that critics say gives the Ministry of Information (MOI) overly broad powers to issue and revoke publication licenses has been passed by the lower house of parliament and is set for consideration by the upper house.

Myint Kyaw is secretary for the Myanmar Journalist Network

(MJN), which has been protesting the proposed bill, known as the Printing and Publishing Enterprise Bill. He told IPS that the MJN's main criticism of the bill was in its conception of a printer and publisher registry system, which would essentially allow a ministry-appointed registrar to issue or deny publication licenses and thus leave control over these licenses in the hands of the government.

This situation is reminiscent of when the ministry used to control journalists and editors through the threat of license revocation, Myint Kyaw described. Such a possibility, combined with the threat of imprisonment and aggression, would lead to self-censorship, particularly when speaking critically of the military or when investigating corruption, notably that of former dictators and their family businesses.

Myint Kyaw also spoke of the need for a law guaranteeing access to information and ensuring safety for journalists in conflict areas. Earlier in August, MJN also collected thousands of signatures from around Yangon, the country's former capital city, for a petition that demonstrated the public's discontent with the state of media reform.

The current parliamentary bill comes at a time when many human-rights groups remain critical of Myanmar's attitude towards the media. In June, the government banned Time magazine after it featured a piece on the radical Buddhist 969 movement.

"It's a disgraceful decision to ban the issue and indicates recidivism in official censorship in Burma [the former name for Myanmar]," David Mathieson, a senior Asia researcher with Human Rights Watch, told IPS.

Benjamin Ismail, head of Reporters Without Borders' Asia-Pacific desk, expressed a similar viewpoint. "The reflex of censoring news has not disappeared, but this is not a surprise since the government is composed in majority by the same persons who were already in power before 2011."

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Censorship rears its head in Myanmar