Paper Tricks Burma's Junta

The generals are made a laughing-stock



Wild Courage: There are times when somebody does something so wildly courageous – or quixotic – that it makes you proud just to be in the same profession with them. That happened a week ago when Burma's best-selling sports journal, First Eleven, led the paper with three front-page headlines that appeared to be about football — "Sunderland Freeze Chelsea," "United Stunned by Villa" and "Arsenal Advance to Grab Their Hope."

But the paper, run by an individual named Dr. Than Htut Aung, altered the letter colors to spell out a message so that the combined colored letters read: "Su Free Unite & Advance to Grab The Hope." That revealed the news to Burma's long-suffering population that democracy icon Aung San Suu Kyi had been released from seven years of house arrest by the hated junta that has run the place for the last 31 years.

That was a stunning dare and one that made the ruling State Peace and Development Council, as Burma's ruling junta calls itself, a laughing-stock in the eyes of the world. It earned First Eleven a two-week suspension from publication, which was probably light punishment, considering the junta's previous actions. People have been sent to jail for the possession of fax machines.

The country's papers were only allowed to carry the briefest mention of Suu Kyi's releases from detention. They was not allowed to carry any criticism of the country's blatantly rigged national elections although some districts apparently reported that more than 100 percent of the voters had endorsed the junta, which didn't allow Suu Kyi to stand – probably judicious, since she probably would have pulled the 86 percent victory percentage she won in the 1990 election that the junta refused to recognize.

Much of the independent Burmese press distinguished themselves in a way that reporters in the west and more civilized countries have never had to deal with. In order to get their stories out they have darted into internet cafes, filed a few lines and skipped out for the next place before those monitoring the cafes could figure out what they were up to. A team of reporters dared detention to report stories for Asia Sentinel and other independent media. In addition to First Eleven, three privately owned journals were reprimanded by the censorship board for reporting on Suu Kyi's release. Open News was also suspended for two weeks for announcing her release and carrying news of her speech to her supporters. "Burma, which heavily censors print and broadcast media, has also applied extensive restrictions on blogging and other Internet activity," according to a prepared release by the Committee to Protect Journalists, which calls the country the worst in the world for bloggers. One – Maung Thura, popularly known as Zarganar, was sentenced to 59 years in jail for disseminating videos of Tropical Cyclone Nargis in 2007, for which the country was woefully unprepared.

"Authorities heavily regulate (internet) cafés, requiring them, for example, to enforce censorship rules," the CPJ said. "The government, which shut down the Internet altogether during a popular uprising in 2007, has the capability to monitor e-mail and other communication methods and to block users from viewing Web sites of political opposition groups, according to OpenNet Initiative. At least two bloggers are now in prison."

According to an article in The Irrawaddy, staff at First Eleven fooled the Press Scrutiny and Registration Division (PSRD) by sending them copy for approval in black and white. "When the publication was released, people quickly began talking about it. That's how we found out. After that, the Ministry of Information took action against the journal," a staff member of the censorship board told Irrawaddy.

Other Rangoon papers took other action. Because they couldn't run any large photos of Suu Kyi or put her photo on the front page, most printed the story and picture as a "supplement." When they sold the copies at newsstands, the supplements, with large photos of Suu Kyi, were wrapped around the papers to become the cover.

At least 12 reporters for local publications are behind bars in Burma, CPJ said in a prepared release. In addition, the Burmese arrested Toru Yamaji, a reporter with Agence-France Presse, indicating he had been arrested in Myawaddy, on the country's eastern border with Thailand while trying to cover the country's first elections in two decades. The CPJ quoted Japan's embassy in Rangoon saying Yamaji was flown to the capital after being detained. In September 2007, the video journalist Kenji Nagai, who also worked for APF, was shot and killed while covering demonstrations by Buddhist monks and their supporters in Rangoon.

http://www.asiasentinel.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=2831&Itemid=208

Boat people victims of a big lie

MY FATHER dug up a photo from the family archives last week of my late Great Aunt Rita, his father’s sister. She is standing aboard a boat that had just arrived in Port Melbourne in the late 1940s. Staring at her across the deck is a crowd of well-dressed, young smiling faces.

You’d have to wonder why they were smiling. They had just travelled six weeks across the ocean from southern Europe after fleeing the ravages of World War II.
Many were alone, many had lost entire families.
Perhaps it was because they knew that interest rates in Australia were then controlled by the government.
Rita was this country’s first welfare officer, having served as immigration minister Arthur Calwell’s secretary.
Her job was to ensure safe passage of post-war displaced people to this country under the government’s policy of Populate Or Perish.
I’m told she would often get on the boat herself and sail to Europe to collect the lost and bewildered, travel back with them, many with little or no English, and help them resettle as the New Australians.
She was a pioneer in a program that eventually transformed the mono-cultural character of Australia. Most would say for the better.
Looking at these pictures, it struck me, as odd as it may sound, that the big four banks have done the political debate on asylum seekers a service this past week, by making too much money and charging people more to have some of it.
They have put the issue in context. And in doing so they have exposed the great lie of the recent election campaign and the moral perversion that accompanied it.
Today, unless you live in Inverbrackie, the only thing in your hand would be a calculator and the last thing on your mind would be the threat of a population explosion or cultural dilution. One of the burdens of living in Australia is that you have to invent horrors to be outraged by.
In the past week, as people recalculate their monthly mortgage payments, hundreds of asylum seekers have quietly arrived at our shores.
A daily missive from the Government heralds the arrival of yet another boat from unknown destination.
But you wouldn’t know it unless you’re on Brendan O’Connor’s email list. And what of the new Paul Erlich-inspired population bomb? But barely a word mentioned.
It simply goes to prove, in a stark demonstration of electoral caprice, that the recent federal election was fought, largely, around a big fat lie - that Australia was at risk of being swamped by boat people. Again.
It’s no wonder that there is some deep soul searching going on in the Labor Party at present. Much of it is about how it approached this issue during the election in response to the Coalition’s well-worn dog whistle. Greg Combet called it for what it is last week when he suggested the values of compassion, equity and social justice had been abandoned in favour of focus groups and polling.
And so it is with this deliberately confused debate around immigration, population and illegal entrants and the push polling of fear that has driven it.
Its effect has been a wilful distortion which encourages the issue of illegal entrants to be confused and demonised in the community as an excuse for failures to deal with the broader discussion on immigration levels and population numbers, which neither side of politics has an answer for.
The fact is that the number of boat arrivals in the past year numbered 5237, which is 3.15 per cent of the total immigration program of 168,623. If you take it as a percentage of the 2009 net overseas migration figures or population growth which was 320,400, the percentage is down under 1 per cent.
Here’s another figure. In 2008, there were an estimated 42 million displaced people in the world, 15.2 million refugees and almost one million asylum seekers.
Australia is abou tNo. 22 in the world in the ranking of countries most likely to have people lining up at the border to get in. More people actually apply to get into Cyprus and Malta than they do Australia.
YESTERDAY, the Sunday papers warned that we have hit record high numbers of people arriving by boat, although the figure is only marginally higher than it was in 2001.
Julia Gillard was right when she said it would take 20 years to fill the MCG with asylum seekers as they arrive at their current rate to Australia.
More backpackers are in this country illegally than people who arrive by boat.
But what she failed to do - and still fails to do - is clearly articulate the issue as not one about a bigger Australia and immigration levels but one that has distinct and separate obligations, which we as a country have signed up to.
With every wave of migration to Australia - whether forced or encouraged, and largely in reaction to war - there have been accompanying campaigns of fear that white European heritage and culture would be further diluted.
Whether it was the Greeks and Italians, Eastern Europeans, Russians or Turkish, or the Indochinese that followed, the same fears were raised in the community and fostered for political advantage.
How ironic that there is probably not an Australian alive today who hasn’t eaten at a Vietnamese or Chinese restaurant. Beer companies now even make ads about kebabs. We all eat Greek salads and spaghetti bolognese.
Hell, there is even a North African diner in Neutral Bay that is permanently booked out.
Sadly, the current hysteria is a case of history repeating itself under a different racial and religious banner. This time the fear being cultivated is that we are to be swamped by Muslims.
Again, the notion is an absurdity. Not just because many fail, sometimes deliberately, to make distinctions between Islam and extremism, but because the numbers simply don’t stack up.
For a start, of the three main groups currently dominating illegal entrants to the country, the Tamils from Sri Lanka are predominantly Catholic or Hindu. They are not Muslim.
Of the Afghan refugees, the majority are Hazara. And while they are Muslim, the reason most are fleeing their country is because the Taliban are terrorising them for not being Muslim enough.
On both sides of politics, there are decent men and women who privately see this issue through a prism of compassion, humanity and reason.
But the politics of fear that has been allowed to fester in the community has swamped the judgment of those whose responsibility it is to lead by example and principle, and not by misguided populism. Populism should be reserved for bashing banks and a bit more humanity put back into the debate about asylum seekers.

From: Simon Benson in The Daily Telegraph.

http://blogs.news.com.au/dailytelegraph/simonbenson/index.php/dailytelegraph/comments/boat_people_victims_of_a_big_lie/

What the papers say

[RAP: DVB looks at some international reporting and commentary of the Burmese "elections".]



... Japan deserves some praise, having broken the trend of silent Asian nations when it spoke of its “deep disappointment” with the polls. But back inside Burma, such sentiments may be wasted among the inured population, who have asked for help so often from the international community but been provided with little. As the listed air that settled over Burma yesterday suggests, expectations these days are nil; that it was only punctuated by gunfire in the east is perhaps even more telling.

http://www.dvb.no/analysis/what-the-papers-say/12723

How the Guardian got it wrong on censorship in SE Asia

 From: Jon Russell at Asian Correspondent.

"It is usually positive to see southeast Asia's web censorship raised in mainstream titles like the Guardian, however I can't help agreeing with Elicano in thinking this article may do more harm that good. The assumption that the region is following China is hugely misleading and belies the complex domestic circumstances and cultures which are responsible for each country's own censorship issues.
As the Thailand government have shown, censorship in the region is far from black and white and shouldn't be lumped together to make for easy comparison with China."


http://asiancorrespondent.com/jon-russell/how-the-guardian-got-it-wrong-on-censorship-in-se-asia

http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2010/oct/21/internet-web-censorship-asia

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/interactive/2010/oct/21/asia-web-censorship-bloggers

Rights Activists Say Thai Media Liberties Slipping as State of Emergency Extended

"Vincent Brossel, Asia Director of Reporters Without Borders, says journalists appeared to be targeted during the Bangkok protest. According to the organization's press freedom index, Thailand was ranked 130th out of 175 countries in 2009.

Brossel says if the environment for media does not improve quickly Thailand's ranking will drop further.

"Thailand has been in the past one of the most open countries for media in the region," Brossel said. "And, it's turning very critical of the press freedom and it's no more an example for the rest of the sub-region in terms of media freedom."
http://www.voanews.com/english/news/asia/Rights-Activists-Say-Thailands-Media-Liberties-Slipping-as-State-of-Emergency-Extended-97870059.html

Thailand must repeal or reform emergency legislation immediately

http://www.amnesty.org/en/news-and-updates/thailand-must-repeal-or-reform-emergency-legislation-immediately-2010-09-30

"Invoking these laws has become almost routine for the government," said Benjamin Zawacki, Amnesty International's Thailand researcher.

"As a result, the extraordinary powers they grant to curtail human rights have often been abused to block the expression of peaceful dissenting views."

The Emergency Decree also authorizes virtually unfettered censorship of news and information outlets, and expressly confers immunity from prosecution for officials who violate human rights law in the course of their duties.

Amnesty International called on the government of Thailand not to renew the Emergency Decree in Bangkok and the six other non-southern provinces where it is in effect, and to either repeal the Decree and the ISA or bring them into compliance with international law and standards."

Indonesia concludes Australian drug smuggler Scott Rush's final hearing

The president has previously shown little mercy to death row drug convicts, although he regularly reduces sentences for corrupt officials.

I'm not usually inclined to include these personal interest stories. However, the above line caught my eye and made me smile.

None of this takes anything away from the fact that prisons in Indonesia are appalling and Mr Rush will be joining the many Indonesians and overseas nationals that languish in them. Families of detained Indonesian people will be rallying around to raise money to secure the most basic necessities for their family members in often far-away prisons.

(See: http://www.thejakartaglobe.com/home/indonesian-prisons-pamper-the-rich/352166 ; http://www.indonesiamatters.com/9687/indonesian-prisons/ )

Emboldened Burmese Workers Press for Change

http://www.irrawaddy.org/article.php?art_id=19472

Bangkok’s migrant labour policy shift stemmed from an endless stream of reports in the media and by labour and human rights organizers shedding light on the scale of abuse the undocumented migrant workers were subjected to by Thai employers and Thai officials, including the police.