Writing from the other side
Squatting on the floor I am rolling a two-feet fluorescent tube across a sheet of heavy waxed paper, careful not to exert too much pressure. On the paper is a political statement written with a stencil pencil by one of my student friends. A plate of glass is placed underneath. Ink has been applied evenly to the glass's surface with a wooden ruler. With our hands stained with ink, we roll out up to hundred sheets of paper. Our clandestine “printing house” is my bedroom and we operate after midnight. After printing, we rush to wash our hands and clean the place thoroughly to erase any evidence. It is already in the wee hours.
Our next move was what I would call an ambush. It involved two bicycles with two persons on each – taking action under the cover of darkness. The rider of each bicycle raced against time, cruising along as fast as they could. The rider behind applied glue to the back of the printed statements, using the rider’s back as a support. When the bicycle stopped, the pillion rider jumped off, run to a tree trunk, lamp post, bus stand or brick wall to paste the statements there.
With our eyes open we ensure that no one was following us. Before dawn, we would have covered our neighborhood. After dawn, people would be reading the statements and sharing them with friends and family. Soon the local authorities would come and tear down our work. The mission, however, would have been accomplished. In the morning, we would sit in a tea shop and start planning for our next “ambush”.
This was just before the country's pro-democracy uprising in 1988. Our underground printing house eventually progressed into publishing a political journal, named O-Way. It consisted of critical, political, democracy-related articles. By then, we had also upgraded our printing tool to a duplicating machine. After three years of churning out our journals I was caught. One of the main charges was my involvement in publishing the journals. A special military court of the ruling regime gave me 10 years imprisonment in the notorious Insein Prison. My colleagues became my inmates.
Two decades later tools and methods have certainly changed: today the information is spread immediately inside and outside Burma through digital means. However, little has changed regarding freedom of press in my country.
One recent example is Hla Hla Win, a 25-year-old journalist, who was sentenced to 20 years imprisonment on December 31, 2009. Her crime was that she had sent information to exiled media through e-mail. She was charged under the Electronic Act, which prohibits using Internet for sending text, photos or video that could harm the Burmese regime abroad.
Seeing the regime clamping down on journalists like Hla Hla Win, I wonder about the future of press freedom. How many more will be sent behind bars? How many more will end up like me in exiled media? Today – 22 years after my colleagues and I operated that “printing house” in my bedroom – I find myself working for an exiled media The Irrawaddy, based in Thailand. Over the past two decades, Burmese exiled media organizations have mushroomed, which is a concrete proof that inside Burma, press freedom has been muzzled. My country has won a reputation as enemy of press.
Kyaw Zwa Moe
Managing Editor
The Irrawaddy Magazine
Thailand, on the Burma border