TEMPO.CO, Jakarta - A river of red overflows Pyi Htaung Su Road in Yangon as the mass of party faithful make their way to Myo-o-Pagoda to listen to their world famous leader address the final poll rally before Myanmar’s first real election in a quarter century. Tens of thousands of supporters of global democracy icon and leader of Myanmar’s opposition party National League for Democracy (NLD), Aung San Suu Kyi are coming to the rally ground, sporting the vibrant NLD colour.
As I stop to take a picture of a food cart covered in NLD campaign regalia, a burly man with thick arms and a dark, scowling face quickly blocks my way and points at my camera.
“What channel?” he asks in heavily accented English. His thick fingers close around the press ID holder around my neck.
Just in time, my interpreter and guide, former local journalist Kyaw Lynn, comes to my side and waves him off, speaking quickly in Burmese. He reassures me that the man was a part of the NLD rally security team and only making sure that I was not a government security personnel disguised as a journalist.
Despite the dramatic loosening since 2011 of decades of restrictive military rule, political opposition parties and journalists in the country are still suspicious of security agencies in the country.
More freedom but still a long way to go
Kyaw’s concern has basis in fact as meetings with local journalists in the country reveal. Most acknowledge that the media is much freer now. Incidents of violence against journalists by the state security apparatus are largely a thing of the past. Gone are the days when journalists were arrested without a warrant and beaten up in custody.
Democracy Reporting International (DRI), an independent international media monitoring group, has not found any violence against journalists during the election period. The Asian Network For Free Elections (ANFREL), an independent international election observer, has also not reported physical threats to journalists during the elections.
But something less conspicuous, albeit no less sinister has taken the place of overt threats, local journalists say.
In a statement two days after the November 8 election, ANFREL said: “Like ANFREL observers themselves, media faces scrutiny from security forces and must exercise extra caution as a result. The arrest of activists who shared political jokes via Facebook had a likely additional chilling effect on the media’s reporting of certain sensitive issues related mainly to the military.”
The new Media Law enacted in 2014 has provisions that journalists believe were inserted to suppress the press. It supplements three older laws – the Electronic Transactions Law, the State Secrets Act and the Penal Code. Ten local journalists are still in jail charged with violating one of these four laws among others.
The Electronic Transactions Law requires clearance from authorities in order to publish online, for example starting a blog. Burmese journalists say it is very difficult to get the clearance and most activists ignore this requirement, thus exposing themselves to the risk of imprisonment of between 7 to 15 years under the law.
They fear that registration required for the clearance will make them vulnerable to state surveillance.
In 2008, former political blogger and NLD candidate Nay Phone Lyatt, who will be a member of the new Parliament, was charged with violating the Electronic Transactions Law for his extensive Facebook posts about the crackdown on anti-government protestors during the 2007 Saffron Revolution led by activist monks.
Imprisoned for 20 years in 2008, Lyatt was, however, released in 2012 under the mass pardon of journalists and political activists.
Busy preparing for a poll campaign event in his campaign headquarters in Yangon, Lyatt points out: “The government will use the law to intimidate and punish not only journalists when they don’t like what you are saying.”
Even Suu Kyi cautioned against optimism. “I would like to remind you since 2012, I have been saying that what we need is a healthy dose of skepticism,” she told over 300 mostly foreign journalists at her house in Bahan district on the shores of Inya Lake a few days before the Myanmar election.
Nyein Chan Naing, a photographer for the European Press Agency (EPA) explains: “If they do not like the journalist, they can still charge (you) with the electronics law. This means we still don’t have freedom.”
DRI has also noted self-censorship by the Burmese media which avoids writing stories critical of the Burmese military. Journalists contacted in Myanmar confirmed this.
“We don’t have censorship like in 2010. On the other hand, are journalists really free? I have doubts. I feel there is something like self-censorship. There are red lines (journalists are) not willing to cross. One of these red lines is talking about the military,” says DRI representative Rasto Kuzel.
The unexplained October 2014 death in military custody of freelance journalist Aung Kyaw Naing, arrested while reporting from an area in southwestern Myanmar held by the rebel Democratic Karen Benevolent Army, added to the media apprehensions. No military officials have been held accountable for his death, despite a complaint filed by his widow.
As Nyo, who did not get elected, says, the slight improvement in the media environment since 2011 is a result of the Thein Sein government’s bid to show the world that Myanmar is on the road to genuine democracy.
“To some extent we have a slight change but we are still in a semi-dictatorship. People in government lack the willingness for real change. The international community has been too optimistic about the changes in the country”, she adds.
Choosing sides
Myanmar’s decades’ long struggle for democracy has made freedom of the press synonymous with the opposition’s campaign for political freedom.
Peace and gender activist, May Sabe Phyu, winner of the United States Department of State’s 2015 ‘International Women of Courage’ award, believes this cannot be helped given several decades of strong-handed military rule where press freedom was virtually non-existent.
But she says that linking the demand for media freedom and democratization in Myanmar exposes journalists to risk. “Government sees the press as troublemakers. Because we have been fighting for freedom for so long…the press is aligned with the democracy movement.”
Sabe Phyu herself has seen how the government uses the law to retaliate against people considered “unfriendly”. Her husband, activist Patrick Khum Jaa Lee is in jail for online dissemination of a Facebook post of a photo of a man stepping on the picture of military chief Senior General Min Aung Hlaing. In his Facebook repost, Khum Jaa Lee criticized the original social media posting and cautioned against its further online distribution.
She thinks her husband may have been arrested because of their social and political activism. “It may have been his or my work (as activists) that is to blame.”
Journalists have also been taking a second look at media ethics.
May Thingyan Hein, CEO of Myitmakha News Agency says the best protection for her journalistic staff is balanced and fair reporting.
“We always cover both sides...balanced stories are okay...sometimes it cannot be helped (when) journalists are biased to one side.”
May Thingyan says her news organization strives to be balanced all the time and has good relations with both the government and pro-democracy forces.
DRI has also taken note of these divisions in its monitoring of 5 TV stations, 10 newspapers and 3 online news organizations in the run up to the elections. “One can see that the media environment here is rather split and divided and I would say, divided along political lines,” says DRI’s Kuzel.
“You have state-funded newspapers which very much present the position of the government and a number of private newspapers that very much, during these elections, appear to be supporting the main opposition NLD,” he adds.
ANFREL has also seen these political divisions.
The dawn of a new day
It is 5:30 in the morning. Dawn is breaking over Yangon and Sule Pagoda in central Yangon shimmers in a golden hue as the darkness retreats. Myanmar’s date with its political future has arrived.
As voters inside the polling station, chat excitedly, local journalists and civil society representatives waiting there tell me that expectations are very high from what is widely perceived to be the first free elections since 1990.
As social media channels explode with reports of the unofficial tallies of the vote count coming in from across the country, I meet Kyaw Lynn again at the NLD headquarters along Shwegondaing Road. NLD red has flooded the street, forcing traffic to a standstill. Video screens in front of the party office show a live video feed from the polling centers as the voting closes.
“NLD is winning almost all seats,” Kyaw Lynn tells me, a big smile on his face.
Subsequently, as the final results would come in with the NLD securing a landslide win, the military-backed ruling Union Solidarity Development Party (USDP) and the military joined the world in congratulating Suu Kyi.
Hopes are running high in the country that the massive victory of NLD would mark the start of the genuine democracy and freedom of expression in Myanmar.
(This article, written by Chino Gaston who is working for the GMA News TV in the Philippines, is produced for the 2015 Southeast Asian Press Alliance (SEAPA) fellowship program raising a theme “Covering the coverage of the 2015 elections in Myanmar.”)
