Read All About It
Asiaweek
MAY 25, 2001 VOL.27 NO.21
It's a difficult business being the censored voice of a country on the verge of great change. But the Myanmar Times manages, and potential investors should take heed
By ROGER MITTON IN YANGON
Does Ross Dunkley have problems? You bet he does. Like all publishers, he faces the usual vexations in keeping a newspaper afloat - finding advertisers, chasing stories, meeting deadlines. Other concerns are less mundane. Power outages mean office computers and printing presses regularly sputter to a halt. Telephone lines and Internet connections are whimsical at best. On-the-job training for about 60 local staff members eats into the daily routine. Sometimes, just finding enough paper and ink to print the weekly Myanmar Times is a major battle. And then there's the fact that Dunkley can hardly report the biggest story in town - ongoing talks between Myanmar's military dictators and democracy activist Aung San Suu Kyi. That omission makes critics sneer: Dunkley's journal is not just in bed with the devil, it's the devil's advocate.
Does Dunkley care? Not one bit. More than a year since launching the English-language Myanmar Times, the 43-year-old Australian editor and businessman (he's chief executive of publisher Myanmar Consolidated Media) is having the time of his life. "We have strung together a very good team." he says. "It's a great atmosphere at our offices." Dunkley acknowledges that his papers accommodate government censors. He is unapologetic about having a junta colonel's son as his deputy CEO. In fact, Dunkley insists that simply by publishing, he is encouraging Myanmar's liberalization. "If you look back at where we were one year ago, the sort of stories we ran then and compare them with today, there is a big difference," he says. And when the country finally opens up, Dunkley reckons his papers will be sitting pretty. "Competitors will have a hard time chasing us," he says.
Junta lapdog, liberalizing influence - or maybe a bit of both. It's a tricky line the Myanmar Times is walking. But it's a line that businesses should be watching, because Myanmar is set to open up soon. The eight-month-old talks between Suu Kyi and the junta appear to have bogged down, but they haven't stopped. The outlines of a compromise are slowly emerging. It won't be a democracy, not right away, but it won't be an outright dictatorship, either. Civilians will join generals in government, and Myanmar will enter a halfway house where investment will be internationally acceptable, if still heavily scrutinized by global human rights watchdogs. The Myanmar Times, as it strives to produce a credible product and turn a profit in the most politically sensitive of businesses, journalism, could become a model for how to operate in the coming new Myanmar.
For the moment, the investment climate could hardly be worse. Government incompetence and tough international sanctions imposed because of the junta's abysmal human rights record have meant that most blue-chip foreign investors pulled out years ago. A few remain, such as oil companies Unocal of the U.S. and Total of France, but they are targets of protests and lawsuits in the West for having benefitted - if only indirectly, they claim - from the regime's use of slave labor.
Politics aside, Myanmar has a private enterprise culture in which businesses can thrive. After spending the '90s publishing a newspaper in Ho Chi Minh City, Dunkley has nothing but praise for the privately-owned printers he deals with compared with the state-owned presses of Vietnam. Once the opening comes, small enterprises like the Myanmar Times will lead the country's growth. They will train Myanmar's workers and managers, the way the Times is training from scratch reporters and editors who at least have an inkling about professional standards.
Among the few sectors holding up is the textile industry. Yangon is ringed by 384 garment factories, owned by investors from Hong Kong, Singapore, Malaysia and Taiwan as well as by locals. Yet consumer boycotts prompted many Western labels to end contracts. "Most of my U.S. customers were targeted and that nearly killed me," says one factory owner. He is still hopeful, though. The talks between Suu Kyi and the regime already have made a difference. "There's a positive dialogue going on," he says. "The Americans have backed off [on more sanctions] until they see the outcome."
Worries that the talks are near breakdown have grown recently in the absence of concrete signs of progress. The situation is fragile, but the two sides are continuing to meet. The regime knows politics is crippling the economy, and the generals want Suu Kyi to endorse investment. At least twice a month Maj.-Gen. Kyaw Win, a favorite of supreme leader Than Shwe, visits Suu Kyi's home. Other participants in the meetings say the two get along well, both being educated, no-nonsense pragmatists. Both sides have made confidence-building gestures. The regime has released more than 100 members of her National League for Democracy from detention, although hundreds more remain in jail. At Suu Kyi's urging, the NLD has stopped holding daily meetings at its Yangon headquarters.
The four-month absence from Yangon of Razali Ismail, the United Nations special envoy who helped bring the two sides together last October, has added to concerns about the talks. But one participant in the dialogue says neither side felt Razali's presence is needed at the moment. "There is too much heat generated when he visits," he says. "We want to do this on our own." But Razali may be called in to help break an impasse caused by regional commanders balking at some of the compromises the two sides are considering.
Suu Kyi has avoided meeting Western diplomats, but she did have a private audience last month with United Nations human rights rapporteur Paulo Sergio Pinheiro. Afterwards he said: "There are several signs that indicated evolution leading to an eventual political opening." Reading those signs, the head of the U.S. diplomatic mission in Yangon, Priscilla Clapp, says: "We are witnessing for the first time in decades some rays of hope."
It's a story that Dunkley at the Myanmar Times can't report. At present, his paper doesn't enjoy a stellar reputation. "It's a pro-government rag," says a Western diplomat. A recent issue blared "Summer Sizzler!" about Yangon's unusually hot weather, without mentioning the collapsing value of the local currency or plans for electricity rationing. Yet the paper has some (perhaps dull) teeth. "It does carry some criticism of government policy," says another diplomat. "There've been stories about the lack of Internet access, about inflation, health and education matters."
Dunkley says he pushes government censors, who must okay every story. Occasionally he even wins - rewording a report instead of having to drop it altogether. "In some ways we are a litmus test to an opening up process," he says. "People can criticize you from over the fence, but when you are sitting in the chair you have to be patient. Some [regime] people are still learning that a little liberalization in the media is a good thing." Suu Kyi and the NLD appear on the pages of the paper when news merits, without the derogatory tags common in the official media, if they mention her at all. While not critical, the Times is helping to create some breathing space for non-junta views, space where a host of books and journals covering sports, fashion, motoring and international affairs have begun to sprout.
So what's the payoff for all the journalistic kowtowing? The Myanmar Times isn't making money yet,though that didn't stop Dunkley from launching a Burmese-language sister paper in March. But it is coming out every week, building a corps of journalists, and cultivating a circle of readers and advertisers. And when a settlement comes and foreign investment held back during Myanmar's ostracism starts flowing in, he reckons the Times will shine in a new, competitive environment. And as for those who call him a stooge for the junta, Dunkley thinks they should get over it. Maybe he'll editorialize on that subject one day. One day soon.