Burma
Sun brush with Burmese police
Nick Parker and Peter Jordan from The Sun newspaper felt the long arm of the Burmese law this week. The reporter and snapper duo were stopped as they headed south into the Irrawaddy Delta, We were ushered into an office where an immigration officer was waiting with pen poised. He seized our passports and began […]
No cameras, no foreigners
On the back of yet another foreign journalist deportation from Burma – the BBCs Paul Danahar was deported on 11 May following Andrew Harding’s short trip to Rangoon last week – IPS reports that cameras and foreigners are banned from the country that was devastated by Cyclone Nargis on May 2, This week, a senior […]
CNN man in Burmese chase
CNNs man in Myanmar, Dan Rivers, left the cyclone stricken country last Friday after being pursued by Burmese authorities. He credits his ability to evade capture upon the incompetence of those in hot pursuit. He defaced his passport, hid under a blanket and thinks he may have finally escaped due to the impatience of a […]
Reporting Cyclone Nargis
DSC05551, originally uploaded by Azmil77. Russell Boyce is in charge of the Asia picture desk at Reuters. Yesterday, he says, was a “tough day”. He is, of course, referring to Cyclone Nargis that ripped through Burma with a final death toll that could reach 100,000. Russell talks about the day on the Asia desk on […]
Andrew Harding deported from Burma
He’d only just arrived, but the Burmese authorities weren’t having any of it. Andrew Harding was hoping to report on the aftermath of Cyclone Nargis, but he was on the next plane out when ‘irregularities’ were spotted at border control. AFP quotes the state run New Light of Mynamar newspaper, “A journalist who is working […]
Pulitzer prize winners 2008
The Pulitzer prizes were announced last night. Among the winners are Steve Fainaru, from the Washington Post, who receives the prize for International Reporting for his reports on private security contractors operating in Iraq. Also, Reuters Bangkok senior snapper Adrees Latif wins the prize for Breaking news photography for his images of Japanese video journalist […]
Burmese bloggers continue to risk their lives
Some five months on since the violent suppression of the protest movement led by monks in Burma and the situation for bloggers is no better. The bloggers, who were such an important part of getting images, video and eyewitness accounts out of the country, continue to blog about life in Burma and relay information overseas. […]
A day in the life of a Burmese journalist
Aye Chan Myate, who was until recently a senior editor with a weekly journal in Rangoon, writes in The Irrawaddy what it’s like to be a working journalist in Rangoon. Doesn’t sound a whole lot of fun, In our newsroom, only the management desk and the copy-typists worked with computers. We reporters and editors had […]
Missing Burmese blogger spotted
IFEX reports that a Burmese blogger has gone missing from his home in Rangoon. The blogger, Nay Phone Latt, was allegedly arrested on 29 January according to his mother, Daw Aye Aye Than. Although her son’s whereabouts cannot be confirmed, eyewitness accounts on Mizzima suggest he is being held at the Ministry of Home Affairs, […]
Burmese hacks back on the beat
Win Ko Ko Latt, of the weekly Eleven journal, and Nay Linn Aung, of the 7-days journal, have both been freed and are back at work, officials at their companies told. Both newspapers are private, Myanmar-language weeklies that operate under the constant watch of military censors, who tightly control the nation’s media. The newspapers declined […]
Getting the story out
Writing in Ha’aretz, Yotam Feldman tells it as it is, or was, and how he got the story out of Burma, It’s 4 A.M. at Bangkok airport. Minutes before my plane is to lift off for Rangoon, I get a call on my mobile. In loose English with an Asian accent, a screaming voice says, […]
Killing Foretold
At the time of writing the State Peace and Development Council, as Burma’s junta styles itself, was still sticking to its story that only 10 had died as a result of its latest assault on democracy in September. Other sources suggested a far higher figure, running into the hundreds. Whatever the actual tally, these were […]
Burma footage still getting out
You can shut the internet down, but you can’t stop the flow of film. The footage above was taken a couple of days ago and we can only assume it was smuggled out the old fashioned way – on a memory stick, in a shoe, in a cigarette packet etc. I expect there’ll be more […]
Dodging the goons in Rangoon
Scouring the net for Burma-related stuff – there’s getting less and less from the ground – I come across Frontline’s Ben Hammersley and an intriguing wee snippet from the year 2000’s where are they now file, When I got to Rangoon Airport, I knew I would be searched. I had been followed all afternoon – […]
Easy as ABC
When ABC’s senior foreign correspondent Jim Sciutto crossed into Myanmar today from neighboring Thailand the authorities took away his camera. So he filed his report for World News and the webcast, with the next best thing, his cell phone. link via BoingBoing
Swedish journalists feel the Burmese heat
Several Swedish and Danish news media outlets said on Monday they had been contacted by Burmese regime officials urging them to withdraw their reporters from the country for their own safety. link Meanwhile Reporters without borders lay into the Burmese junta once again, “Several other correspondents of foreign news media, including Reuters and Agence France-Presse, […]
The Saffron suppression
The most senior official to defect so far, Hla Win [a former intelligence officer for Burma’s ruling junta ], said: ‘Many more people have been killed in recent days than you’ve heard about. The bodies can be counted in several thousand.’ Mr Win, who spoke out as a Swedish diplomat predicted that the revolt has […]
Burmese Junta detains journalist
Authorities in Burma were detaining a journalist reporting for a Japanese newspaper for the third day Sunday, his family members said. Min Zaw, a Burmese national working for The Tokyo Shimbun, was taken from his home early Friday by plainclothes security personnel who said he would be held temporarily for questioning. Family members said his […]
Burma 29 September 2007
Only the milita who surround the journalist are willing to be interviewed. When he asked them what they thought, as Buddhists, of the fact that the junta had shot monks, they replied that it was not the monks who were demonstrating, but rather people desguised as monks, paid by powerful westerners to plant the seeds […]
Not Twittering but CBoxing the saffron revolution
Twitter might be the trendy kid on the microblogging market, but it’s CBox that’s getting used. Here’s a ‘live’ sampling, 28 Sep 07, 17:43 Ko Hla: Protesters are shouting slogan on 33rd street (between 83rd and 84th Street) in Mandalay. 28 Sep 07, 17:40 forthecountry: Myanmar PM Soe Win is well in SG hospital. http://www.straitstimes.com/Latest%2BNews/Singapore/STIStory_162156.html […]
Burma cuts the net
But, The Irrawaddy continues to get information out from sources on the ground (I’ve added relevant links) Rangoon; Afternoon—Trucks loaded with troops raided the offices of Burma’s main Internet service provider, Myanmar Info-Tech, located at Rangoon University (Hlaing campus) around noon on Friday in an effort to cut all public access to the internet. The […]
Kenji Nagai shot dead in Rangoon
What appears to be footage of the Japanese photojournalist, 50 year old Kenji Nagai shot dead on the streets of Rangoon yesterday. Nagai was working for the Tokyo based APF video and photo agency. Killed for taking photos of protesters and soldiers. Here is an emailed tribute to Kenji Nagai on ko htike’s blog, On […]
Traders
In what looks set to become a latter day Hotel Le Royal the Traders Hotel in Rangoon is allegedly where the foreign journalist contingent find themselves housed. Or at least they did, until this afternoon according to The Irrawaddy, Rangoon, 3:30 p.m.—Soldiers entered Traders Hotel, situated in the heart of Rangoon, near Sule pagoda, on […]
Death of a journalist
The Daily Telegraph has a series of photographs that purport to show the death of a Japanese photojournalist in Rangoon, Burma today. I suspect these photos originally surfaced on Ko htike’s blog
Cellphone journalism
“This time, compared to 1988, there are lots of new technologies to get the news out of Burma … People are able to take pictures, videos to evidence what is going on. It is quite amazing for Burma, which is a very poor country,” said Vincent Brossel, director of the Asia desk for Reporters Without […]
Lacking correspondence
Writing on the Guardian Editor’s blog, Murray Armstrong explains how the newspaper is approaching the Burma story without having a correspondent in the country, Colleagues on Guardian Unlimited reported this morning that they had been working with Burmese-speaking translators yesterday and today to gather as much information as possible from blogs and other communications from […]
Bloody saffron revolution
Reporters Without Borders is appalled by the death of a Japanese news photographer on the streets of Rangoon this morning. Another foreign journalist was reportedly injured. The press casualties came after the security forces opened fire on demonstrators near the Tarder Hotel in the centre of Rangoon. link Meanwhile… One photographer imprisoned and five journalists […]
Latest from Rangoon
The latest from Rangoon courtesy of Irrawaddy, At least two protestors were shot by security forces in downtown Rangoon near Sule Pagoda on Wednesday afternoon. One protestor reportedly died, according to people who took part in the demonstration. The source said the soldiers continued firing at the demonstrators, who numbered several thousand. link
Burmawatch
The troops are out, but so are the monks and the people in what must now be one of the most heavily cameraphone filmed protest movements in the history of the devices. The Guardian’s Matthew Weaver is blogging developments and showing video from the streets and temples.
Monk power
picture link from ko htike I couldn’t resist snarling this photo to extend our Burma coverage into another post. Either come down hard on the Buddhist monks leading the protests — and risk turning pockets of dissent into nationwide outrage as reports and grainy mobile phone images of revered, maroon-robed men and boys being beaten […]