Burmese Media Revolution: Shouts for freedom from exile ; Kyaw Zaw & Irrawaddy

Articles from - http://www.sampsoniaway.org/bi-monthly/2010/07/27/burmese-media-revolution-shouts-for-freedom-from-exile/

by Silvia Duarte

Kyaw Zwa and the Irrawaddy magazine

When Kyaw Zwa Moe was in high school, it was easy for him to grab a book from his home library of more than two thousand volumes. He was especially attracted to books about Burmese history, politics, and literature. Thanks to that, he said, the idea of democracy was foremost in his mind. When the pro-democracy movement began, he became a leading member of the student union in his school.

On September 18, 1988, the now-ruling junta staged a bloody coup and the military authorities launched a crackdown against all political organizations. Kyaw Zwa’s union went underground. He and his fellows continued their political activities until their arrests in 1991. Kyaw Zwa was sentenced to 10 years in the Insein Prison, notorious for inhumane and dirty conditions, prisoner abuse, and use of mental and physical torture. He was there for eight years.

In prison he improved his English. Prison guards who were sympathetic to jailed activists, smuggled American magazines into his cell. “I unintentionally learned journalistic writing when I read stories published in Time and Newsweek. I never wanted to be a politician; I wanted to be independent, and I thought that writing for a journal or magazine could be my way,” he said via email.

One year after his release, Kyaw Zwa fled to Thailand and joined Irrawaddy magazine as a reporter and researcher. Irrawaddy magazine is publication of the Irrawaddy Publishing Group (IPG), founded in 1992 by Kyaw Zwa’s brother Aung Zaw. Published online in both Burmese and English, it is regarded as one of the leading publications on political, social, economic, and cultural issues in Burma.

In addition to news, the magazine features in-depth political analysis and interviews with a wide range of Burma experts and other influential figures. International media outlets frequently cite it as a source of reliable information. Other Internet news services based in exile are Mizzima, The New Era Journal, and Network Media Group.

In 2005 Kyaw Zwa received a scholarship to attend University of California Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism as a visiting scholar. “After having studied and worked as a journalist, I fell in love with this profession,” Kyaw Zwa added. Now, as a managing editor of the Irrawaddy, his concerns are the accuracy and balance of the articles they publish and “to provide regular training to our staff reporters and to recruit good journalists.”

Kya Zwa’s biggest preoccupation is the safety of his undercover correspondents. Some Irrawaddy’s reporters are also inside Burma and they work in a very risky environment. However, he doesn’t know exactly how many readers  have access to Irrawaddy inside Burma: the magazine is banned in his country, as are other Internet news services based in exile.

People who want to read Irrawaddy have to use proxy servers, which is as difficult as it is dangerous. According to Reporters without Borders, just 0.5 percent of the Burmese population has access to the Internet, thus individual subscriptions are very expensive and subject to the government authorization. Internet cafés are under strict surveillance: their owners are required to take screen shots of each computer every five minutes and must be prepared to provide every user’s ID and telephone number when the police request them.

Irrawaddy, Mizzima, and DVB have all been targets of cyber attacks. Kyaw Zwa is sure that the government is going to be more aggressive this year because of the coming elections. Even though government sources say they will guarantee a fair, multiparty election, the strongest leaders of the opposition parties cannot participate because they are under arrest. The pro-democracy movements claim that the election is just a farce of the junta, and Burmese news services in exile report this election represents a challenge in terms of coverage. Irrawaddy has built a new website just to publish content about the elections.

Kyaw Zwa knows that as an exile his risks are less than for those inside Burma. However his responsibilities seem bigger than before. Now he has to try to be objective when he writes about a government that has hurt him in a direct way; he has to deal with more readers, both fans and adversaries; and he is more conscious of the difficulties to defeating the regime.