Update on Journalism and Media Safety in Myanmar: July-September 2024
Update on Journalism and Media Safety in Myanmar: July-September 2024
Highlights
There were no reports of arrests of journalists in Myanmar in the third quarter of 2024. However, two journalists were injured in a junta air attack while on assignment in Hsipaw, Shan State.
A citizen journalist was sentenced to 27 years in prison after being charged with contacting the People’s Defence Forces (PDF). This is among the longest prison sentences reported so far.
Two journalists left prison in this quarter. One was a citizen journalist who was released after serving her sentence in Insein prison, Yangon. The second was a journalist who escaped from prison during fighting between Myanmar National Democratic Alliance Army (MNDAA) and the junta’s military forces in Lashio township, Shan State.
The media industry lost four journalists during this reporting period. Two died due to health conditions resulting from the lack of adequate healthcare in prison, and two freelancers were shot dead by soldiers who raided one of the journalists’ homes.
As of September 2024, 54 Myanmar journalists and media professionals remained behind bars. Cumulatively, since the February 2021 coup, 213 journalists and news workers have been arrested, 76 convicted, and 160 released under the military regime, run by the State Administration Council.
Eleven journalists have died since 2021. Of this number, four deaths were reported in this quarter.
Meantime, Myanmar journalists in exile continue to organise themselves through various groups aimed at providing support, setting standards and carrying out advocacy work. The latest among these is the Myanmar Journalists Club, which was established in August 2024. It will focus on investigating the abuses of journalists’ rights in their news organisations.
In the wake of concerns about journalists being able to carry out independent reporting in regions controlled by ethnic armed organisations, the Independent Press Council of Myanmar (IPCM) met with the Karen National Union (KNU) in August to discuss the media guidelines that the KNU previously issued for journalists in its areas. The two groups agreed to respect each other’s roles, to settle media-related disputes through dialogue and to promote media development and literacy.
Myanmar’s journalists face a mix of challenges around getting documents that allow them to stay in neighbouring Thailand. The newest challenges have come from the latest crackdown by Thailand’s immigration officials, which launched a 120-day programme in June to go after migrant workers without proper identification or documentation. The documentation for migrant workers in Thailand is one of the options that exiled Myanmar journalists use to stay in the country.
Another challenge came from a September announcement by the Myanmar embassy in Bangkok, which said that short-term student visa holders in Thailand now need to return to Myanmar to renew their passports. This new requirement is of concern to exiled journalists because some among them hold education visas for Thailand.
Journalists’ work in Myanmar was disrupted further by damage to communication infrastructure during Typhoon Yagi, which affected wide parts of the country in late September.
