On a typical day, Mai Rupa travels by his native Shan State, in japanese Myanmar, documenting the affect of warfare.
A video journalist with the net information outlet Shwe Phee Myay, he travels to distant cities and villages, amassing footage and conducting interviews on tales starting from battle updates to the state of affairs for native civilians dwelling in a warfare zone.
His job is fraught with dangers. Roads are strewn with landmines and there are occasions when he has taken cowl from aerial bombing and artillery shelling.
“I’ve witnessed numerous individuals being injured and civilians dying in entrance of me,” Mai Rupa mentioned.
“These heartbreaking experiences deeply affected me,” he informed Al Jazeera, “at occasions, resulting in severe emotional misery.”
Mai Rupa is certainly one of a small variety of courageous, impartial journalists nonetheless reporting on the bottom in Myanmar, the place a 2021 army coup shattered the nation’s fragile transition to democracy and obliterated media freedoms.
Like his colleagues at Shwe Phee Myay – a reputation which refers to Shan State’s wealthy historical past of tea cultivation – Mai Rupa prefers to go by a pen title as a result of dangers of publicly figuring out as a reporter with one of many final remaining impartial media retailers nonetheless working contained in the nation.
Most journalists fled Myanmar within the aftermath of the army’s takeover and the increasing civil warfare. Some proceed their protection by making cross-border journeys from work bases in neighbouring Thailand and India.
However employees at Shwe Phee Myay – a Burmese-language outlet, with roots in Shan State’s ethnic Ta’ang group – proceed reporting from on the bottom, masking a area of Myanmar the place a number of ethnic armed teams have for many years fought towards the army and at occasions clashed with one another.
Preventing to maintain the general public knowledgeable
After Myanmar’s army launched a coup in February 2021, Shwe Phee Myay’s journalists confronted new dangers.
In March that 12 months, two reporters with the outlet narrowly escaped arrest whereas masking pro-democracy protests. When troopers and police raided their workplace within the northern Shan State capital of Lashio two months later, your complete workforce had already gone into hiding.
That September, the army arrested the organisation’s video reporter, Lway M Phuong, for alleged incitement and dissemination of “false information”. She served practically two years in jail. The remainder of the 10-person Shwe Phee Myay workforce scattered following her arrest, which got here amid the Myanmar army’s wider crackdown on the media.
Unfold out throughout northern Shan State within the east of the nation, the information workforce initially struggled to proceed their work. They selected to keep away from city areas the place they could encounter the army. Daily was a wrestle to proceed reporting.
“We couldn’t journey on foremost roads, solely again roads,” recounted Hlar Nyiem, an assistant editor with Shwe Phee Myay.
“Generally, we misplaced 4 or 5 work days in every week,” she mentioned.
Regardless of the hazards, Shwe Phee Myay’s reporters continued with their clandestine work to maintain the general public knowledgeable.
When a magnitude 7.7 earthquake hit central Myanmar on March 28, killing greater than 3,800 people, Shwe Phee Myay’s journalists have been among the many few capable of doc the aftermath from contained in the nation.
The army blocked most worldwide media retailers from accessing earthquake-affected areas, citing difficulties with journey and lodging, and the few native reporters nonetheless working secretly within the nation took nice dangers to get info to the surface world.
“These journalists proceed to disclose truths and make individuals’s voices heard that the army regime is determined to silence,” mentioned Thu Thu Aung, a public coverage scholar on the College of Oxford who has carried out analysis on Myanmar’s post-coup media panorama.
On prime of the civil warfare and threats posed by Myanmar’s army regime, Myanmar’s journalists have encountered a brand new risk.
In January, the administration of US President Donald Trump and his billionaire confidante Elon Musk’s Division of Authorities Effectivity (DOGE) started dismantling the US Company for Worldwide Growth (USAID).
USAID had allotted greater than $268m in the direction of supporting impartial media and the free stream of data in additional than 30 nations around the globe – from Ukraine to Myanmar, based on journalism advocacy group Reporters With out Borders.
In February, The Guardian reported on how the freezing of USAID funds created an “existential disaster” for exiled Myanmar journalists.
The state of affairs worsened additional in mid-March, when the White Home declared plans for the US Company for World Media (USAGM) to scale back operations to the naked minimal. USAGM oversees – amongst others – the Voice of America and Radio Free Asia, which have been each main suppliers of stories on Myanmar.
Final week, RFA introduced it was shedding 90 p.c of its employees and ceasing to supply information within the Tibetan, Burmese, Uighur and Lao languages. VOA has confronted the same state of affairs.
Tin Tin Nyo, managing director of Burma Information Worldwide, a community of 16 native, impartial media organisations based mostly inside and out of doors Myanmar, mentioned the lack of the Burmese-language companies offered by VOA and RFA created a “troubling info vacuum”.
Myanmar’s impartial media sector additionally relied closely on worldwide help, which had already been dwindling, Tin Tin Nyo mentioned.
Many native Myanmar information retailers have been already “struggling to proceed producing dependable info”, on account of the USAID funding cuts introduced in by Trump and executed by Musk’s DOGE, she mentioned.
Some had laid off employees, lowered their programming or suspended operations.
“The downsizing of impartial media has decreased the capability to observe [false] narratives, present early warnings, and counter propaganda, in the end weakening the pro-democracy motion,” Tin Tin Nyo mentioned.
“When impartial media fail to supply information, policymakers around the globe will likely be unaware of the particular state of affairs in Myanmar,” she added.
‘Fixed worry of arrest and even loss of life’
Presently, 35 journalists stay imprisoned in Myanmar, making it the world’s third-worst jailer of journalists after China and Israel, based on the Committee to Shield Journalists.
The nation is ranked 169th out of 180 nations on Reporters With out Borders’ World Press Freedom Index.
“Journalists on the bottom should work below the fixed worry of arrest and even loss of life,” Tin Tin Nyo mentioned.
“The army junta treats the media and journalists as criminals, particularly focusing on them to silence entry to info.”
Regardless of the hazards, Shwe Phee Myay continues to publish information on occasions inside Myanmar.
With 1,000,000 followers on Fb – the digital platform the place most individuals in Myanmar get their information – Shwe Phee Myay’s protection has turn into much more important because the army coup in 2021 and the widening civil warfare.
Established in 2019 in Lashio, Shwe Phee Myay was certainly one of dozens of impartial media retailers which emerged in Myanmar throughout a decade-long political opening, which started in 2011 with the nation’s emergence from a half-century of relative worldwide isolation below authoritarian army rule.
Pre-publication censorship led to 2012 amid a wider set of coverage reforms because the army agreed to permit larger political freedom. Journalists who had lived and labored in exile for media retailers such because the Democratic Voice of Burma, The Irrawaddy and Mizzima Information started cautiously returning house.
Nevertheless, the nation’s nascent press freedoms got here under strain in the course of the time period of Aung San Suu Kyi’s Nationwide League for Democracy authorities, which got here to energy in 2016 on account of the army’s political reforms.
Aung San Suu Kyi’s authorities jailed journalists and blocked impartial media entry to politically delicate areas together with Rakhine State, the place the army dedicated a brutal marketing campaign of ethnic cleaning towards the Rohingya group and for which it now faces worldwide fees of genocide.
However the state of affairs for impartial journalists dramatically worsened following the 2021 coup. Because the army violently cracked down on peaceable protests towards the generals seizing energy, it restricted the web, revoked media licences and arrested dozens of journalists. That violence triggered an armed rebellion throughout Myanmar.
‘If we cease, who will proceed addressing these points?’
Shwe Phee Myay briefly thought-about relocating to Thailand because the state of affairs deteriorated after the coup, however these working the information web site determined to stay within the nation.
“Our will was to remain on our personal land,” mentioned Mai Naw Dang, who till not too long ago served because the editor of Burmese-to-English translations.
“Our perspective was that to assemble the information and gather footage, we wanted to be right here.”
Their work then took on new depth in October 2023, when an alliance of ethnic armed organisations launched a surprise attack on army outposts in Shan State close to the border with China.
The offensive marked a significant escalation within the Myanmar battle; the army, which misplaced important territory in consequence, retaliated with air strikes, cluster munitions and shelling. Inside two months, greater than 500,000 individuals had been displaced as a result of preventing.
With few exterior journalists capable of entry northern Shan State, Shwe Phee Myay was uniquely positioned to cowl the disaster.
Then in January this 12 months, Shwe Phee Myay additionally obtained discover that USAID funds authorized in November have been now not coming and it has since lowered subject reporting, cancelled coaching and scaled again video information manufacturing.
“We’re taking dangers to report on how individuals are impacted by the warfare, but our efforts appear unrecognised,” editor-in-chief Mai Rukaw mentioned.
“Despite the fact that we now have a robust human useful resource base on the bottom, we’re dealing with important challenges in securing funding to proceed our work.”
Throughout employees conferences, Mai Rukaw has raised the potential for shutting down Shwe Phee Myay along with his colleagues.
Their response, he mentioned, was to maintain going even when the cash dries up.
“We all the time ask ourselves: if we cease, who will proceed addressing these points?” he mentioned.
“That query retains us transferring ahead.”
