Burma Gov’t Charges 17 Journalists

Human rights watchdog, Freedom House issued a statement condemning the contempt of court charges filed against 17 journalists in Burma. Freedom House said in their statement that the contempt of court charges filed against the 17 journalists was an indicator of the lack of press freedom in Burma […]

Myanmar Charges 17 Journalists

In response to the contempt of court charges filed against 17 journalists in Myanmar, Freedom House issued the following statement […]

Caught Between State Censorship and Self-Censorship: Prosecution and Intimidation of Media Workers in Myanmar

Myanmar’s media landscape has seen a radical change since the country embarked on a series of important political, economic and social reforms, announced by President Thein Sein in March 2011. The lifting of pre-publication censorship, the release of imprisoned journalists and greater space for freedom of expression have seen the development of an increasingly vibrant and diverse media. These media reforms have been lauded by many in the international community, who are keen to point to increased media freedoms as one of the hallmarks – and successes – of Myanmar’s reform process […]

[Burma] Government Using New Media Law to Stifle Criticism

SEAPA views with utmost concern the latest move of the Ministry of Information (MOI) in Myanmar to pursue legal action against the Myanmar Thandawsint (Myanmar Herald) using the new Media Law for publishing scathing commentary about the words of President Thein Sein. […]

Burmese Journalists Call for Govt Protection

Burmese journalists took to the streets in Rangoon on Sunday to mark the UN International Day to End Impunity For Crimes Against Journalists. The demonstration was staged to send a message to the Thein Sein government to take active measures to protect reporters within the country.

About 100 demonstrators gathered in solidarity in front of Rangoon City Hall wearing black wrist bands to protest what they say is an ongoing repression of media freedom in Burma and the continuing arrest of reporters […]

Myanmar: Ensure Independent and Impartial Investigation into Death of Journalist

The Myanmar authorities must ensure a comprehensive, independent, impartial and effective investigation into the death of journalist Aung Kyaw Naing, aka Par Gyi, who was reportedly killed while in the custody of the Myanmar Army in Mon State, Eastern Myanmar, earlier this month. Failure to adequately ? and transparently ? investigate such serious allegations and hold perpetrators to account would further entrench impunity in the country, and have a chilling effect on other journalists […]

Bi Mon Te Nay Journalists Must Be Freed!

Burma Campaign UK today called for the immediate and unconditional release of the Bi Mon Te Nay journalists. Bi Mon Te Nay Journal’s three journalists Kyaw Zaw Hein, Win Tin, Thura Aung, and owners Yin Min Htun and Kyaw Min Khaing were arrested in July, and were investigated by the Special Branch police in Burma […]

ကိုေအာင္ေက်ာ္ႏိုင္ (ခ) ကိုပါႀကီးအား အစေဖ်ာက္ သုတ္သင္ျခင္း၊ ဥပေဒမဲ့ သတ္ျဖတ္ျခင္းအား ကန္႔ကြက္႐ႈံ႕ခ်ျခင္း

၂၀၁၄ ခုႏွစ္၊ စက္တင္ဘာလ (၃၀) ရက္ေန႔က က်ိဳက္မေရာၿမိဳ႕ စက္ေလွဆိပ္ တြင္ ျမန္မာစစ္တပ္က အလြတ္တန္း သတင္းေထာက္ ကိုေအာင္ေက်ာ္ႏိုင္ (ခ) ကိုပါႀကီးအား ဖမ္းဆီးခဲ့ပါသည္။ ထို႔ေနာက္ ျမန္မာ့ တပ္မေတာ္ ေျချမန္ တပ္ရင္း ၂၀၈တြင္ ခ်ဳပ္ေႏွာင္ဖမ္းဆီး၍ စစ္ေဆး ေမးျမန္းသည္ဟု သိရပါသည္။ ၄င္းေနာက္ ေအာက္တိုဘာ ၂၃ ရက္ေန႔တြင္ ျမန္မာႏိုင္ငံ စာနယ္ဇင္းေကာင္စီ (ယာယီ) မွေန၍ ေၾကညာခ်က္တစ္ေစာင္ ထုတ္ျပန္ခဲ့ပါသည္။ […]

Justice for the Killing of Journalist by Burma Army Must be Found

News of the murder of a journalist by the Burma Army while being held in custody should send shockwaves across the country and beyond, but sadly it is not much of a surprise for those who are aware of the abusive nature of the most powerful institution in Burma. What will transpire next will be a clear indicator of the Government’s will to pursue justice and end the impunity that the Burma Army has enjoyed for so long. Not many are optimistic.

Aung Kyaw Naing, also known as Ko Par Gyi, was a freelance journalist covering the recent clashes in eastern Burma between the Democratic Karen Benevolent Army (DKBA) and the Burma Army and its’ proxy Border Guard Force (BGF). After visiting Kyaikmayaw, Mon State, the scene of heavy clashes in September 2014, Ko Par Gyi went missing. His wife, Ma Than Dar, began to search for him and held a press conference on 21 October in Rangoon stating that he was being held in custody by the Burma Army and demanded his immediate release. Just a few days later, a statement was issued to the Myanmar Press Council (Interim) by an aide to commander-in-chief of the armed forces, Min Aung Hlaing, that detailed Ko Par Gyi’s death while in custody. The statement claims that Ko Par Gyi was a captain for the Klohtoobaw Karen Organization (KKO), the political wing of the DKBA, and was shot dead while trying to escape. The DKBA has denied that Ko Par Gyi was indeed a member of their organization […]

အလြတ္တန္းသတင္းေထာက္ ကိုေအာင္ေက်ာ္ႏိုင္ (ခ) ကိုပါႀကီးကို ပစ္ခတ္ သတ္ျဖတ္မႈအား ပြင့္လင္းျမင္သာစြာ စုံစမ္းေဖာ္ထုတ္၍ ျပစ္မႈ က်ဴးလြန္သူမ်ားကို ျပည္သူေရွ႕ေမွာက္တြင္ မွန္ကန္စြာ တရားစီရင္ေပးရန္ ေတာင္းဆိုျခင္း