YANGON—Myanmar residents knew something unusual was afoot this August when state-run newspapers suddenly dropped their regular slogans denouncing the BBC and the Voice of America for "sowing hatred among the people," followed by moves to unblock their websites in the country.
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A man sells a newspaper with a photo of Aung San Suu Kyi in Yangon Oct. 6. Below, another recent paper.
Pictures and articles about famed dissident Aung San Suu Kyi began showing up in the press for the first time in years. Journalists have started posting articles online without the approval of government censors—previously a no-no—and even dared to criticize government policies in print.
While still tightly controlled, Myanmar's media landscape is cracking open in significant ways, local journalists and residents say, as authorities loosen restrictions in a country long seen as one of the most repressive in the world.
In recent years, Myanmar residents have been able to use the Internet and have had access to some foreign media, including CNN in hotels and some foreign news publications online. But the websites for many foreign news sources deemed overly critical of the government, including the BBC and Reuters, were customarily blocked, along with YouTube as well as dissident publications that reported closely on Myanmar affairs from outside the country. With the latest steps to unblock sites, Myanmar residents now have access to a wide array of foreign news sources, as well as dissident publications such as the Irrawaddy, which is based in Thailand and regularly publishes scathing criticisms of Myanmar's government.
Myanmar's Political History
Myanmar, the Southeast-Asian country formerly known as Burma, has faced political turbulence since its oppressive military regime gained power in 1962. See some key events in the country's history.
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Myanmar ranked next-to-last out of 196 countries in press freedom last year, ahead only of North Korea, according to U.S.-based advocacy group Freedom House—which put China in 181st place—and journalists are routinely imprisoned there, human-rights groups say. Daily coverage is dominated by a small handful of government mouthpieces, while articles in most of the country's 350 or so independent news publications—typically weeklies and monthly journals—must be approved in advance by a censorship board. For years that left essentially all critical reporting to be done by exile publications working with undercover reporters inside the country.
But in recent weeks, reporters inside the country are openly writing about controversial topics—including a mass amnesty of an estimated 200 political prisoners that occurred earlier this week.
The changes are among a host of recent developments that have boosted hopes Myanmar's government is looking to turn the page on decades of harsh rule since the military took over there in 1962. Soldiers handed over power to a civilian government this year after an election that was widely decried by Western observers as a fraud. But since then, authorities have rolled out a slew of conciliatory gestures, including the prisoner release and numerous economic reforms, that have caught many Western diplomats off-guard.
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The Wall Street Journal
A newspaper from Myanmar with a photo of dissident Aung San Suu Kyi.
A more robust press is already helping shape public debate in unforeseen ways in the resource-rich country between China and India. Last month, the government suspended construction of a $3.6 billion China-backed hydroelectric dam in a rare concession to environmental activists after weeks of unexpectedly critical coverage in Yangon papers, which galvanized local opposition and added pressure on the authorities to act, people familiar with the government's thinking said.
The dam suspension "reflects that the government pays attention to the voice of the people and the media" now, said Than Htut Aung, chairman of the Eleven Media Group, which publishes the Weekly Eleven news journal and several other publications in Myanmar. Six months ago, he said, he wouldn't have agreed to be interviewed by a foreign reporter—saying there might have been "a lot of complications and repercussions." But "now the situation is good," he said.
There are crucial limits to the media opening, which highlights why some residents remain wary of the government's recent changes. Many topics—including criticism of the military or former strongman Senior Gen. Than Shwe, who stepped down earlier this year—remain off limits, and Western-style investigative journalism into issues such as corruption is out of the question, local reporters say. Many fear the latest easing could be rolled back at any time, putting today's more outspoken journalists at risk.
Even with the loosened restrictions, journalists fear they remain subject to punishments, including prison terms, if they publish something deemed later to be detrimental to the state.
"Compared to what we had a few years ago, we are much freer," said Thiha Saw, editor of Myanma Dana, a monthly business magazine. But "it's not a full opening," he said. "They may be opening up, but we know they are still afraid of many things."
Government officials and advisors have said authorities are serious about creating a more open media, and are contemplating a new media law that would potentially eliminate Myanmar's censorship board entirely.
"What the government would like to see is a free and responsible media, not a restricted media," said Ko Ko Hlaing, an adviser to Myanmar President Thein Sein.
For now, editors and journalists are trying to see how far the boundaries can be pushed.
Numerous publications have splashed pictures of Ms. Suu Kyi, a Nobel laureate who was released from seven years of house arrest last year, on their front pages—an act that was unheard-of until recently. The Weekly Eleven newspaper this month published an interview with Aung Zaw, a known critic of the Myanmar government who edits the Irrawaddy news journal.
"I had to pinch myself" to believe it was all happening, Mr. Aung Zaw said. Even so, "the openness is very limited—it's a baby step.""I don't know exactly why they are doing it," he said. Perhaps "they want to show a good face to the international community," he said, adding, "we cannot see behind the curtain."
Myint Kyaw, a local freelance journalist, said several reporters have even started posting news stories online via Facebook and some newspaper websites in real time rather than waiting for censors' approval—and no one has complained, he said.
He described covering a recent small protest rally to mark the four-year anniversary of the so-called "Saffron Revolution" in 2007, when thousands of monks marched on Yangon streets before the rallies were stopped in a bloody crackdown by government soldiers, killing at least 30 people.
Not only were people allowed to gather on the anniversary—an unlikely occurrence in past years—but he and the other journalists were allowed to interview rally leaders and even take pictures of riot police nearby, which wouldn't have been possible before, he said. "Clearly they were instructed not to arrest" people, he said.
Daily news in Myanmar is still dominated by state media, whose coverage in a handful of papers and TV news programs continues to focus on topics such as state meetings or government tours of infrastructure projects, while downplaying or ignoring controversial topics. Editions of the government mouthpiece New Light of Myanmar published Thursday, for instance, focused on a presidential visit to India and a "Full Moon Day" holiday, with scant reference to the massive prisoner amnesty a day earlier that also included thousands of everyday criminals.
Gone, though, are the paper's well-known rants against the Western media, such as one bold-faced warning published last year calling on citizens to "not allow ourselves to be swayed by killer broadcasts designed to cause troubles," such as those by BBC or the Voice of America. Absent, too, are once-common front-page headlines such as "Myanmar citizens must be for Myanmar and not be a stooge of any alien."
—Celine Fernandez in Kuala Lumpur contributed to this article.
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