Beyond Borders | Myanmar on Our Minds
"I hope we don't meet about this again next year," remarked a speaker from Myanmar at the close of a webinar I listened to today, one of the many conversations that marked the first anniversary of the 1 Feb 2021 coup in that country.
There have been some 4.5 million posts using #WhatsHappeninginMyanmar thus far. Google trends for the phrase 'Myanmar coup' show that searches peaked in March 2021, fell to much lower numbers from July onwards and climbed up somewhat toward, and during, the coup's one-year anniversary.
But a lot has been happening in the media spaces around the Myanmar story. There has been a flurry of webinars, releases and discussions around creative work, ranging from films (Burma Spring Benefit Film Festival) to books ('Picking Off the Shoots Will Not Stop the Spring' and New Naratif review here), art (including rap) and projects like diaries in Kite-Tales.
Controversies marked the one-year date too, including one still raging around comments by the newly appointed UN Special Envoy to Myanmar, Noeleen Heyzer, around "power-sharing" in Myanmar in an interview with Channel NewsAsia. The two-minute video clip is here - the full version is not on CNA's website as of this writing. Angry outbursts followed, including a statement from 247 civil society groups. On 2 Feb, Heyzer's office issued a statement saying it "regrets its misrepresentation indicating she used the term 'power-sharing' and proposed it as a solution in the context of the political crisis in Myanmar".
Next to watch: the ASEAN foreign ministers' retreat on 15-17 Feb, an event that had been postponed from January due to differing views on dealing with Myanmar's military. (Curiously, the ASEAN Chairman's Statement on the anniversary of Myanmar's coup was issued late on 2 Feb, the day after the one-year mark.)
In this issue, we share some of our own one-year-after-the-coup stories. Some good reads around media and creative work are also in the 'Clickworthy' section below.
One of our first stories soon after the coup was about journalists. Today, many of them soldier on, away from the bigger outlets you might know. Some news people have shifted to selling bus tickets or cosmetics (see our story below - and do pass on our translations into Burmese, Thai and Khmer to reach more local readers). Others are waiting it out in the borderlands, doing some reporting while growing their own food and getting used to cooking with firewood and charcoal, outdoors.
Johanna Son
Editor/founder - Reporting ASEAN
reportingaseandesk@fastmail.net
1 A Year after the Coup
In Myanmar, Journalism is a Minefield — www.reportingasean.net
By KO THET PAING
Since the February 2021 coup, many journalists have had to change to other work or flee to safer areas, while those who stick with news live in constant worry. But in the darkness, journalists are keeping their eyes focused on better times for their profession - someday.
in Burmese: အာဏာသိမ်းပြီးတနှစ်အကြာ ... မြန်မာနိုင်ငံတွင် သတင်းလုပ်ငန်းသည် ခယောင်းလမ်းဖြစ်နေ ၂၀၂၁ ခုနှစ် ဖေဖော်ဝါရီလ အာဏာသိမ်းပြီးနောက်ပိုင်း မြန်မာနိုင်ငံရှိ သတင်းသမားများစွာတို့သည် တခြား အလုပ်အကိုင်တခုခုကို ပြောင်းလဲလုပ်ကိုင်ခြင်း သို့မဟုတ် ဘေးကင်းဒေသများသို့ တိမ်းရှောင် ထွက်ပြေးခြင်းများ ပြုလုပ်ခဲ့ကြရသည်။ နေမြဲနေခဲ့ကြသူများမှာလည်း မပြတ်တမ်း စိုးရိမ်ပူပန်နေကြရသည်။ သို့သော်လည်း အမှောင်ခေတ်အတွင်းမှာပင် မြန်မာသတင်းသမားများသည် သတင်းမီဒီယာလောက ပြန်လည်ပွင့်လင်းလာမည့်နောင်တချိန်ကို ရည်သန်၍စူးစိုက်ထားကြသည်။
in Thai: 1 ปีหลังรัฐประหาร: นักข่าวกลายเป็นงานเสี่ยงภัยในเมียนมา นับตั้งแต่รัฐประหารเมื่อเดือนกุมภาพันธ์ 2021 นักข่าวหลายคนในเมียนมาจำต้องเปลี่ยนงานหรือไม่ก็หนีไปหลบภัยไกลบ้าน ส่วนคนที่ยังเหนียวแน่นกับงานข่าว ก็ต้องคอยระแวดระวังอยู่ตลอด แต่ถึงแม้จะอยู่ในสภาวะมืดมนเช่นนี้ หลายคนก็ยังเฝ้ารอวันเวลาที่ดีกว่าสำหรับอาชีพนักข่าวสื่อมวลชนให้มาถึงสักวัน
in Khmer: មួយឆ្នាំក្រោយរដ្ឋប្រហារ៖ នៅមីយ៉ាន់ម៉ា សារព័ត៌មានគឺជាចំការមីន ចាប់តាំងពីរដ្ឋប្រហារខែកុម្ភៈ ឆ្នាំ២០២១មក អ្នកកាសែតជាច្រើននៅក្នុងប្រទេសមីយ៉ាន់ម៉ា ត្រូវផ្លាស់ប្តូរអាជីពទៅធ្វើការផ្សេង ឬភៀសខ្លួនទៅកាន់តំបន់ដែលមានសុវត្ថិភាពជាង ខណៈពេលដែលអ្នកនៅបន្តធ្វើការងារនេះ កំពុងរស់នៅដោយការព្រួយបារម្ភឥតឈប់ឈរ។ ប៉ុន្តែនៅក្នុងភាពអន្ធកាល អ្នកសារព័ត៌មានផ្តោតចក្ខុ ប្រមើលទៅពេលវេលាល្អប្រសើរសម្រាប់វិជ្ជាជីវៈរបស់ពួកគេ នៅថ្ងៃណាមួយ។
Myanmar: ‘Our Opportunity Has Now Come’ — www.reportingasean.net
By ZWE MAHN
The country is plummeting into the gravest political, economic and humanitarian crises in its modern history. But I see a bright future ahead, beyond the darkness.
2 In Numbers
Other infographics are in our 'Myanmar in Numbers' section here.
3 Arrests of Journalists and News Staffers
Below is our latest update as of 27 January 2022. When we started doing these updates in March 2021, we did not know we would still be doing this. This was our 38th update -- the first arrests of journalists started on 9 Feb last year.
Click here for the full data viz around the arrests of media people, which breaks data down by region, gender, age and job. The data we present have been used and quoted in several news reports and wire agencies.
4 Some Throwback Picks
Being Rohingya: 'It’s Not Enough To Just Say Sorry' — www.reportingasean.net It will take time for Myanmar to dismantle the oppressive, dehumanising system in place for decades, says ex-refugee Hafsar Tameesuddin, who talks to us about the past and a future her Rohingya community imagines, and hope to see become reality one day. 'Myanmar is my country, Rohingya is my identity'.
“ဝမ်းနည်းပါတယ်ပြောရုံမျှနဲ့ မလုံလောက်ဘူး” (ရိုဟင်ဂျာတစ်ဦးဖြစ်ရခြင်း) မြန်မာနိုင်ငံ၌ ဆယ်စုနှစ်များစွာတည်ရှိခဲ့သည့် ဖိနှိပ်ကြမ်းကြုတ် လူမဆန်သောစနစ်ကို ဖြိုချဖျက်ဆီးရေး အတွက် အချိန်ယူရဦးမည်ဟု ဒုက္ခသည်ဟောင်း ဟက်ဖ်ဆာ တာမီဆူဒင်က ပြောသည်။ ၎င်းသည် အတိတ်က ဖြစ်ခဲ့သည်များ၊ ရိုဟင်ဂျာတို့ တစ်နေ့ ဖြစ်လာမည်ဟု မျှော်လင့်သည့် အနာဂတ်တို့ အကြောင်း ပြောပြခဲ့သည်။ ‘မြန်မာက ကျမရဲ့ နိုင်ငံ။ ရိုဟင်ဂျာကတော့ ကျမ ရဲ့လူမျိုး’ ဟု ပြောသည်။
Myanmar: ‘Like Lighthouses, Cartoons Help the Public See the Truth’ - — www.reportingasean.net Crises can be fertile ground for art, but they can also chip away at creativity and artists' livelihoods. In this chat with Reporting ASEAN, an artist talks about finding ways to stay inspired, and hopes for the day Myanmar gets past having to wage a revolution..
5 Clickworthy
"Life changed dramatically" | The Kite Tales — kite-tales.org We went from staying at home waiting for Covid to be over, to staying at home because our lives were not secure anymore.
Myanmar’s Poets and Protesters “Write Democracy in Gore” – New Naratif — newnaratif.com A year on from a military coup, a new book of Myanmar poetry captures the rage and resilience of a people locked in a fight against dictatorship.
Stolen Freedoms: Creative Expression, Historic Resistance, and the Myanmar Coup - PEN America — pen.org This report explores the creative response to the February 1, 2021 coup in Myanmar and the military’s retaliatory crackdown.
Meditation: Healing the Healers — Insight Myanmar — insightmyanmar.org A Burmese doctor opens up about his own trauma, and how meditation has helped him retain his mental balance.