By Rob Cuthbert

On the surface, Rangoon is a city that is rotting from without. Significant civic investment has been on hiatus for 60 years. Architecturally, the Burmese government and its people have chosen to invest in interiors, rather than exteriors. The exterior of the high-rise I visited on a summer night in 2012 was in a state of conspicuous decay, but within the building, the office in which I sat was clean, and furnished in a way that could facilitate lucrative business meetings.  Time and money had been spent on the office that were absent from the building that housed it, the pocked roads that abutted it, and the crumbling city that encircled it. Most capital that is spent in Burma, whether it is financial or intellectual, benefits the few and does not benefit the many. Burma is a country where lack of transparency is manifold, and interiors and exteriors, both literal and figurative, are out of synch.

However, in Burma, even if the buildings in Rangoon are literally moldering, figurative exteriors are becoming consequential. For example, if Burma wants to take a regional leadership role as the chair of ASEAN in 2014, it needs the conspicuous trappings of a civil society.[1] To this end, in 2012, Burma, one of Southeast Asia’s most repressive governments, unexpectedly repealed some of the more restrictive portions of its oppressive media law.[2]

That night, inside the well-furnished office where I sat, young Burmese journalists held a farewell party for Ko Aung Naing, the 43-year-old editor-in-chief of Education Digest, the sole education journal licensed by the Burmese government.[3] The day before, Ko Aung Naing had resigned his position in protest, ostensibly because of conflict over content with U Win Aung, the owner of Education Digest.[4] As they ate and drank, loyal members of Ko Aung Naing’s staff mourned his departure, and they worried about how they would fare without his leadership. He had run Education Digest for 28 issues without a significant confrontation with the Burmese government. Toward the end of the night, Ko Aung Naing addressed his staff for the last time:

“I am very sad. I know I have a responsibility to look after [you]. I am so angry that I [am leaving] without looking after your affairs and that you will be left with [U Win Aung] and with no one to speak up for you. ” [5]

Ko Aung Naing’s departure was probably overdue. Tensions between him and U Win Aung had been escalating for weeks. His conflict with U Win Aung was a newsroom struggle. If it had occurred in the West, Ko Aung Naing’s resignation would be a typical newsroom process story: “Irreconcilable Editorial Differences Lead Owner and Editor to Divorce.” But, in Burma, circa 2012, it illustrates the challenges facing the Burmese press, and provides a case study that could inform Western advocacy efforts on behalf of Burmese journalists by highlighting a licensing system for publications that inhibits free expression as much as line editing by government censors.

When the West advocates on behalf of Burmese journalists, it focuses on what the Burmese can and cannot say. But, if the West truly wants to engage in effective advocacy for Burmese journalists, it should expand its concerns to what Burmese journalists, and those who would finance them, can and cannot freely create. Ko Aung Naing, for instance, was handcuffed to U Win Aung because U Win Aung was the authorized license holder of Education Digest, the only education journal legally permitted in Burma at that time. By law, Ko Aung Naing was not free to create a competing journal without a license. If he wanted to write about education, Ko Aung Naing had to work with U Win Aung or engage in an unpredictable license approval process.

The licensing system is not only a formidable check on a free press in Burma, it is another example of Burmese interiors and exteriors contradicting each other. As Burma gives journalists more freedom, the license requirement ensures that the Burmese Government retains ultimate control over the press. The license requirement for publication should be a point of contention between the West and the Burmese. The United States of America should advocate for its abolition- especially while it considers the absolute repeal of Burmese sanctions- in exchange for political and social reforms. [6]

Media Freedom in Burma

In Burma, prison remains a potential occupational hazard for journalists. [7] Under current Burmese law, what one publishes in Burma can still lead to incarceration.[8] As reported by The Myanmar Times, in June 2012, a Burmese editor of Snap Shot Journal, a Rangoon news weekly, was jailed for publishing a photo of a murdered Buddhist woman which allegedly initiated sectarian violence between Muslims and Buddhists in Arakan State.[9]

On the other hand, the government no longer exercises pre-publication editorial control.[10] It was reported in the Myanmar Times that as of August 20th, 2012, Burmese publications no longer have to submit their copy to the Press Scrutiny and Registration Division, also known as the “censorship board.”[11] The censorship board is a bureaucratic embodiment of the 1962, post-coup, Printers and Publishers Registration Law, parts of which were repealed on the 20th.[12] Despite this, although The Myanmar Times also has reported that the government is revaluating the licensing system which currently permits neither daily publications nor ones that are 100% foreign owned, the government can revoke a publication’s license.[13]

Under U Win Aung’s license, Education Digest began publishing on a weekly basis in December 2011, with a circulation of 2,900. For a short period of time, it was under the purview of the censorship board, but in a now common act of Burmese Government incrementalism, Education Digest received an early waiver from the censorship board, making it among the first journals in Burma to have full pre-publication editorial control. As such, before “political journalists” in Burma could publish without the prior consent of the government, the reporters of Education Digest were unsupervised by the censorship board and led by Ko Aung Naing, an editor who did not separate politics from discussions of education policy. 

The Origins of a Burmese Journalist

Ko Aung Naing was born in the Irrawaddy Delta, on the Southern coast of Burma.  Raised in a rural region, he found ways to effectively develop the ability to also both speak and read English. Although Ko Aung Naing has only physically left Burma once- to conduct graduate study in Sri Lanka- he found analogs for his life in English literature. In Burma, especially in Rangoon, Ko Aung Naing’s connection to Anglophone thought and culture is not unusual. Although the West levied sanctions against Burma, the British and American presence never ended. Through the British Council and the American Embassy, the Burmese, including Ko Aung Naing and his staff at Education Digest, have had access to exemplary public libraries and English language instruction in Rangoon and Mandalay, paid for by American and British taxpayers.

Ko Aung Naing was not in Rangoon during the 1988 student protests and subsequent crackdown by the Burmese junta, and he only ever heard about the protests of that era. But he benefited from consistent, formal education in Burma, and a year abroad in Sri Lanka. He also did not spend his 20’s and 30’s as a long-term political prisoner; as another member of the “‘88 Generation,” the student protesters who were prosecuted by the junta after the 1988 Burmese student uprisings.[14] In contrast, Ko Aung Naing, despite threats, has never spent a day in prison and, despite having the opportunity, never joined the Burmese intellectual diaspora abroad.

Sri Lanka and Camelot

From 2001 to 2002, while studying abroad, Ko Aung Naing enumerated the political freedoms of the Sri Lankan people. In Sri Lanka, he felt there was a civil standard, which protected political expression and dissent. In contrast, he said to me, “if you become a political activist [in Burma], [the] government will destroy your whole family [and] your relatives.” He also noted that Sri Lanka accepted foreign aid, something that Burma, most notably in the aftermath of 2007’s cataclysmic Cyclone Nargis, would not do.[15]

By the end of his sojourn, Ko Aung Naing felt the Sri Lankans had advanced more than the Burmese, but he did not feel inferior. Pre-1962 Burma is Camelot for the country’s people: a now-mythic span of prosperity and freedom after independence from the United Kingdom but before the military coup occurred. Taken aback by Sri Lanka’s progress, Ko Aung Naing looked to that era for inspiration. Latent Burmese chauvinism surfaces when he says that if political and economic conditions in Burma do improve, “we can do what we want, more than the Sri Lankan people.”

The Education of an Editor

Upon returning to Burma, Ko Aung Naing moved to Rangoon and became a writer. With time, he would be hired as a writer/editor at Sa Bai Pau, a small political journal where every editor was a generalist, expected to contribute to every part of the journal’s production. While there, Ko Aung Naing also learned how to handle the censorship board, which, among other things, prohibited the use of the phrase “human rights” and the word “democracy.” Familiarity with the draconian punishments of the Government of Burma served to engender unflappability. He told me that when a contentious article prompted the censorship board to threaten him with jail, he was not scared, as many of his friends had gone to jail in the past. Ko Aung Naing’s time at Sa Bai Pau not only taught him to be intrepid and irreverent, but also strategic about managing the censorship board under a deadline, creating equivalent linguistic circumlocutions that were acceptable to the censors, and living with the persistent anxiety imposed on journalists by an authoritarian state.

Ko Aung Naing worked at other journals after Sa Bai Pau, but it was at Environmental Magazine that he developed a talent for layout and for partitioning a journal by section. At an American sponsored library, he was influenced by the layouts of Western publications like the New Yorker and Newsweek. By example, he was learning how to deliver information in print and would take those lessons with him to Education Digest.

U Win Aung, Media License Holder  

U Win Aung was already the owner of Health Digest, a successful health journal, when he applied to the government for a license to publish an education journal.[16] After approximately a year of waiting, U Win Aung was allowed to publish the only education journal in Burma.[17] One of the factors that may have led to the approval of the license was Health Digest’s record of apolitical coverage.[18]  U Win Aung wanted Education Digest to be up to the “international standard,” and through networking, Ko Aung Naing was identified as a good fit for editor-in-chief.[19]    Perhaps unexpectedly, U Win Aung found himself underwriting the political mirror image of Health Digest.

In contrast to Health Digest, Sa Bai Pau and Environmental Magazine-the journals where Ko Aung Naing had worked-communicated the philosophy that policy cannot be separated from politics. To Ko Aung Naing, every policy journal, whether it was environmental or educational, was political. He told me that “without politics, you can do nothing for education, for the environment. “

But, even if U Win Aung had wanted an apolitical education journal, a former Education Digest staffer called it impossible in an interview: “Education is politics in this country. Everything starts from the students, whether it is high school or higher-university level… The history of politics in Burma starts with the student body. Education is all connected with politics; it is not free [from it].”[20] As detailed in an October 2012 Associated Press article, the Burmese government remains aware of the political potential of students, and discourages collaboration and organization.[21] The article continues to observe that dormitories are prohibited and students are forced into distance education.[22]

The First Licensed Education Journal in Burma

At Education Digest, Ko Aung Niang often had to hire and train people with limited experience in journalism, or poor journalistic habits.  Reporters who successfully completed his training were granted the freedom to investigate and develop stories as they saw fit. Ko Aung Naing’s format for Education Digest included sections on “Education and Politics,” “Education and Civil Society,” and “Philosophy of Education;” and Ko Aung Naing contributed a regular editorial. As editor-in-chief, Ko Aung Naing also became both a gatekeeper and a guardian, shielding his staff from the censorship board, the public, and U Win Aung.

More than 20 issues later, Ko Aung Naing and U Win Aung’s professional relationship was faltering. By Western standards, U Win Aung’s complaints were typical: Education Digest doesn’t make enough money and no one reads the “Education and Politics” and “Philosophy of Education” sections of the journal. According to Ko Aung Naing, U Win Aung demanded that Ko Aung Naing remove the allegedly unpopular sections and take measures that would increase revenue. Ko Aung Naing believed that U Win Aung’s financial stewardship of Education Digest was poor and he also suspected that U Win Aung might have been trying to censor Education Digest at the behest of the government. He also believed that it would take two years for Education Digest to achieve profitability, and that it was being unfairly compared to Health Digest, a journal that had been in existence for six years. In contrast to Ko Aung Naing’s claims, however, a second former member of the Education Digest staff essentially characterized U Win Aung as a “nice guy,” who was understandably upset with the way the Ko Aung Naing was running the journal.[23] According to this former staffer, the reporters at Education Digest were already self-censoring their articles, before they arrived on the editor-in-chief’s desk, omitting what could be deemed controversial or illegal.[24]

But prior to Ko Aung Naing’s resignation, U Win Aung hired an administrative assistant whom Ko Aung Naing believed to be a former member of Burma’s security services.[25] Ko Aung Naing, who had been unafraid of the censorship board’s threats of prison, was now frightened. He believed that government informants often gave the authorities the wrong information. He told me that it was one thing to defend an article one had written in front of the censorship board, and quite another to be incorrectly labeled as a “bomb blaster,” a terrorist, by the government of Burma. Although there was no evidence that the new hire was an informant, his presence had an effect on Ko Aung Naing. Eventually, Ko Aung Naing chose to leave Education Digest.

Upon leaving Education Digest, he started planning a new journal- named Education View– to directly compete with U Win Aung, and turned to Zay Thiha, son of U Khin Shwe, a controversial, ruling-party politician, to be both owner and license holder.[26] On November 19, 2012, months after Aung Naing’s departure, Education View’s license was approved, and Ko Aung Naing was allowed to publish what is now Burma’s third licensed education journal, circulation 3,000.  It remains to be seen if Zay Thiha will support Ko Aung Naing in the way that U Win Aung could not. [27]

Licensing- an Impediment to a Free Press That Should Be Removed

Ko Aung Naing’s resignation from Education Digest highlights some of the challenges for journalists in post-censorship board Burma. Although Western criticism of Burma coalesces around what journalists can and cannot print, there are other ways to subdue freedom of expression. In Burma, without a license from the Ministry of Information, access to capital does not automatically confer the ability to publish. [28]

It is both expected and appropriate for the West to condemn the jailing of Burmese journalists, advocate for the presence of Western journalists in Burma, and to continue to promote a free press for the people of Burma. However, it would be both unexpected and prescient for the West to make policy recommendations to the Government of Burma that lend themselves to incrementalism and will immediately benefit Burmese journalism. As the West and Burma negotiate an end to sanctions, one of these recommendations should be the abolition of the Burmese Government’s media license requirement.

Even with capital, U Win Aung, and other investors, had to wait a year to implement their business plan for Education Digest.[29] It took several months for Ko Aung Naing to wait for the government’s approbation of Education View.  In either case, both Ko Aung Naing and U Win Aung’s plans to publish were contingent on a law that inhibits Burmese journalists and media investors alike. Considering that they had at least one interest in common, it is unfortunate that Ko Aung Naing and U Win Aung’s relationship was defined by conflict, not commiseration.

About the Author

Rob Cuthbert is a freelance writer who traveled to Burma on awards from the Smith Richardson Foundation and the Brady-Johnson Program in Grand Strategy.

Endnotes

1. Zaw Win Than, “ASEAN Warms to Political Change in Myanmar,” The Myanmar Times, November 14-18, 2011, accessed October 30, 2012, http://www.mmtimes.com

2. Ei Ei Toe Lwin, “Censorship Ends but Free Press Uncertain,” The Myanmar Times, August 27, 2012, accessed October 5, 2012, http://www.mmtimes.com/

3. I conducted multiple interviews with Ko Aung Naing in Rangoon, Burma during July-August 2012 and I have contacted him subsequently for additional details.

4. Despite several requests I was unable to speak with U Win Aung during my time in Burma. He was unaware that I would write this piece. I do not know if he would have commented for it.

5. Former Education Digest Staff Member, Name of Subject Withheld by Author at Author’s Discretion. Interview by Author. Digital Recording. Rangoon, Burma. July-August 2012.

6. “US Lifts More Economic Sanctions On Burma,” Voice of America News, September 26, 2012, accessed October 30, 2012, http://blogs.voanews.com/

7. Nan Tin Htwe, “’Snap Shot’ Editor Bailed Over Rakhine Coverage,” The Myanmar Times, July 2, 2012, accessed October 5, 2012, http://www.mmtimes.com

8. Ibid.

9. Ibid.

10. Ei Ei Toe Lwin, “Censorship Ends.”

11. Ibid.

12. Ibid.

13. Ross Dunkly, “History Made, but Challenges Ahead,” The Myanmar Times, August 27, 2012, accessed October 29, 2012, http://www.mmtimes.com ; Lawi Weng, “Burma’s Journals Brace for Coming Age of Dailies,” The Irrawaddy, October 5, 2012, accessed October 5, 2012, http//www.irrawaddy.org/

14. Former Education Digest Staff Member, Name of Subject Withheld by Author at Author’s Discretion.

15. Ian MacKinnon, “Burmese Regime Blocked International Aid to Cyclone Victims, Report Says,” The Guardian, February 27, 2012, accessed December 31, 2012, http://www.guardian.co.uk

16. Former Education Digest Staff Member, Name of Subject Withheld by Author at Author’s Discretion.

17. Ibid.

18. Ibid.

19. Ibid.

20. Ibid.

21. Denis D. Gray, “Myanmar Pays Price for Lost Generation of Educated,” Associated Press, June 28, 2012, accessed October 30,2012, http://bigstory.ap.org/

22. Ibid.

23. Second Former Education Digest Staff Member, Name of Subject Withheld by Author at Author’s Discretion. Interview by Author. Digital Recording. Rangoon, Burma. July-August 2012.

24. Ibid.

25. I did not confirm whether or not the administrative assistant was a former member of the Burmese security services.

26. Aye Nai, “Business Tycoon and MP Facing Lawsuit,” Democratic Voice of Burma, February 16, 2012, accessed November 13, 2012, http://www.dvb.no/

27. Ibid.

28. Lawi Weng, “Burma’s Journals Brace for Coming Age of Dailies.”

29. Former Education Digest Staff Member, Name of Subject Withheld by Author at Author’s Discretion.