MYANMAR DAILIES GO BLANK OVER JAILED SCRIBES
Several private newspapers in Myanmar printed black front pages on Friday to protest the recent arrests and sentencing of journalists, in the latest sign the country’s media climate is worsening.
The black front pages, which included a protest message, in the influential Daily Eleven newspaper, its Sports journal and other papers follow a court decision on Monday in which a video journalist for Democratic Voice of Burma was sentenced to one year imprisonment for trespassing and obstructing a civil servant while doing a story on education.
“We are publishing the black front page in protest against the sentencing of the DVB reporter and also to oppose the recent harassment of journalists,” Wai Phyo, chief editor of the Daily Eleven newspaper, told The Associated Press. Myanmar only recently emerged from a halfcentury of military rule. One of the most visible reforms since a new, nominally civilian government came to power in 2011 was a freeing up of the press.
On Monday, Z aw Pe, a 41-year-old video journalist for Democratic Voice of Burma, was sentenced to one year in prison for trespassing and disturbing a civil servant while doing a story on a Japanese-funded scholarship program. In December, a reporter for the Daily Eleven newspaper, working on a story about corruption, was given a 3-month prison sentence for trespassing, using abusive language and defamation.