Read This, You Dinosaurs!
A new journal that will rattle the hardliners
By ROGER MITTON Yangon
FEBRUARY 18, 2000 VOL. 26 NO. 6

 When is a newspaper not a newspaper? When it is published in Yangon without government approval but with military permission. Huh? Bear with us and we'll try to explain. Anyone wishing to publish a newspaper in Myanmar must get a license from the ministry of information, run by Maj.-Gen. Kyi Aung, who thinks draconian restrictions and one-sided news presentation is just fine, thanks. But over at the information division of the elite Office of Strategic Studies, they see things rather differently. Run by the articulate and outward-looking Col. Thein Swe and Lt.-Col. Hla Min, the division, like the rest of the OSS, reports to the regime's strategist, Lt.-Gen. Khin Nyunt.

Thein Swe and Hla Min have been quietly fuming over the way the nation's flagship paper, the stalinist New Light of Myanmar, undermines their efforts to win greater international acceptance for Yangon's point of view. So they authorized the launch of a new paper, The Myanmar Times & Business Weekly, part of a radical attempt to revamp the regime's image. The move represents a daring and risky internal powerplay by that consummate survivor Khin Nyunt. Launching The Myanmar Times, as it is known, is flagrantly against the wishes of the hardliners and could come back to scorch him.

Khin Nyunt's boys have not even bothered to apply to the ministry of information for a license. How are they getting away with that? By playing the old game of semantics. Thein Swe explains: "Only the ministry can approve a newspaper. So it will be a journal, not a paper." Yes, but it will look and feel like an upmarket tabloid. It will carry local and foreign news about politics, business, social affairs and sports.

Scheduled for a soft launch Feb. 12, the new paper - oops, journal - is bankrolled by local entrepreneur Pyone Maung Maung, who is close to Khin Nyunt and whose business already includes the distribution of foreign publications.

The Myanmar Times will be managed and edited by expatriate professionals headed by Australian Ross Dunkley, 42, and will be published by Yangon's Ava Printing House. Dunkley has a successful track record in this sort of venture. In 1991 he helped set up and run the Vietnam Investment Review in Ho Chi Minh City. Vietnam is as mediaphobic as Myanmar. So since the forthright Dunkley succeeded there, perhaps he can in Yangon.

But it will be tough, especially when reporting domestic issues. "Naturally in the beginning we have to be very careful," says Thein Swe. "But The Myanmar Times will be different, more flexible." Isn't there a risk that Dunkley will carry anti-regime stories? "The government need not fear us," replies the editor. "We are not here to create political problems. I want professional objective reporters. I'm not looking for people who want to push a political wheelbarrow." While the new journal (circulation: 30,000) will sell mostly in Yangon, Dunkley also aims to circulate in other urban centers like Mandalay, as well as to countries like Thailand, Malaysia and Singapore. "Up to now," he says, "most of the reportage on Myanmar has been biased, totally lacking in balance and often filled with misinformation."

He aims to put that right and he is confident most people, especially in the business community, will support him. "This is an information-starved society so it should succeed," says a diplomat in Yangon. "But it will be a long way from independent." Dunkley experienced heavy censorship at the start in Vietnam but says over the years authorities became more lenient. He hopes the same will happen in Myanmar. "Allowing this journal to start up is a very good step forward," says Dunkley.

Yes, but surely the ministry of information won't see it that way? "Well,because it's a journal they can't say anything," says Thein Swe. Remember, this is one of Khin Nyunt's inner coterie talking about a key ministry, headed by a fellow general. That's not all. Recently, there has been overt criticism by Khin Nyunt's allies of how the New Light reports on Aung San Suu Kyi and her National League for Democracy. On Feb. 4, a newsletter edited by Thein Swe's colleague Hla Min reprinted an Internet article that referred to the New Light carrying "articles and cartoons on the NLD [that] are so vicious that people reading them cannot go past the vitriol to get at any grains of truth."

The newsletter went on to state: "The high authorities may think it is not necessary, but in the modern world there is a need to give a good impression." The Myanmar Times is theoretically a crucial start in that direction. Like the regime's decision to fly in journalists to view anti-drug programs and allowing the Red Cross to visit prisons, the launch of the journal marks a major break with the mindset of the past.

"Our policies should be - will be - more liberal," says Thein Swe. "We cannot go backwards. So please be patient and wait for the changes." While The Myanmar Times may be a small part of that process, it may also herald an internal battle between Yangon's young modernisers and the rump isolationists. How that plays out may decide the future direction of Myanmar.