Free press in Burma

Burma’s military has done everything it can to suppress what it did to the Rohingya. When an American journalist visited Rakhine State earlier this year, where armed pogroms drove more than 700,000 people from their homes, adult villagers repeatedly assured her that their Muslim neighbours had burned down their own houses and fled of their own accord. But the village children did not realise that they were supposed to tell this ridiculous lie, and so they didn’t.

Now a Burmese court has sentenced two Reuters journalists to seven years in prison for the crime of telling the truth about what the UN has called “ethnic cleansing”.

The case brings into sharp relief the tragedy of Burma’s incomplete democratic revolution and the hypocrisy of its leading light (and Nobel peace prize winner), Aung San Suu Kyi. Ms Suu Kyi was barred from the presidency after an electoral landslide but remains in de facto control. She has refused to resign and refused to speak out. Her president, Win Myint, recently pardoned 8,000 political prisoners – but the two journalists were not among them.

Yet the verdict also underscores the vital importance of a free press and civil society. Were it not for reporters and NGOS who shone light into this “information black hole”, Burmese authorities might indeed have been able to suppress all memory of their crimes.

Sadly, we in Britain cannot be complacent: in this year’s World Press Freedom Index we slid down to 40th place, among the worst in western Europe, due to heavy-handed legislation and vicious threats against journalists. We must strive to remain an example to the world.