Myanmar: One year under Suu Kyi, press freedom lags behind democratic progressWhen Nobel Peace Prize
Myanmar: One year under Suu Kyi, press freedom lags behind democratic progressWhen Nobel Peace Prize laureate Aung San Suu Kyi and her long-persecuted National League for Democracy party won elected office in November 2015, bringing an end to nearly five decades of authoritarian military rule, many local journalists saw the democratic result as a de facto win for press freedom.Myanmar’s previous military regimes imposed strict restrictions on the media, including a pre-publication censorship system that left any news or commentary even remotely critical of the junta or its commanding officers on news publications’ cutting room floors.For decades, Myanmar, previously known as Burma, was home to one of Asia’s most repressive media environments, where scores of journalists who dared to shirk the regime’s censorship orders–either under pseudonyms or by filing secretly to exile-run independent media–were sentenced to jail terms in abysmal and often brutal prison conditions.While those restrictions started to lift under previous President Thein Sein, including an end in August 2012 to pre-publication censorship and the release in November 2012 of political prisoners, including many journalists, in a mass presidential amnesty, self-censorship endured because laws used to stifle free expression and punish dissent remained on the books. In 2013, CPJ’s report “Burma falters, backtracks on press freedom,” found Thein Sein’s military-backed, quasi-civilian government lacked a genuine commitment to a more open press environment.Continue reading on cpj.org. -- source link
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