I am a 21-year-old freelance journalist from a town in Shan State, and began my journalism career in late 2018. One day in early February 2021, I was covering and filming a huge protest rally against the Myanmar military coup in my hometown, when armed police and soldiers broke it up violently.
In my life, I have never encountered the deafening gunshots and sound bombs that were all around me that day. I was suffocating from the teargas, and my airways felt like they were on fire. All these I had only seen in action movies. It was an absolutely indescribable moment. The military’s targeting of journalists continues. As of 28 May, 87 journalists have been arrested since the coup, and 51 of them remain in detention. The junta has brought various legal charges against at least 22 journalists, most of them under Section 505a, according to data tracked by the Reporting ASEAN series.
Reporting from my state, home to many hilly regions, is very different from reporting in urban areas. After the regime imposed a nationwide internet shutdown in February, I became unable to send video files or even text messages to my newsroom in Yangon. But more than 10,000 of its residents joined the general strike or the Burmese Spring Revolution for days on end. The military brutally dispersed these protests – shooting live rounds at random, firing teargas. I filed timely reports in that horrific and chaotic situation, but some of them were not aired or published in the website of the news outlet I contribute to. My seniors did not tell me why, but I could not help feeling neglected after having reported amid bullets and teargas.
In March, the military junta revoked the publishing licenses of five media houses, namely Myanmar Now, Mizzima, Democratic Voice of Burma, 7 Day News and Khit Thit Media. One among these is the media house I report for. During this time, many staff reporters and editors had been abruptly dismissed or laid. Many freelancers like me lost contact with the seniors with whom we discussed stories.
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