By IANS
Kathmandu : The Myanmar junta has stepped up efforts to intimidate the media to prevent the world from learning what is going on in the country after it began crushing public protests led by monks, media watchdogs said.
Reporters Without Borders and Burma Media Association (BMA) said one reporter had been killed, six arrested and nearly 10 injured or harassed in Myanmar since the demonstrations against the junta began.
“The toll from the media’s attempts to cover the pro-democracy demonstrations mounts by the day,” the two organisations said in a statement. “The international community most do something to stop the repression and must demand the unconditional release of the detained civilians.”
While Japanese video reporter Kenji Nagai was killed in military firing on unarmed protesters, authorities arrested Min Zaw, the Myanmarese correspondent of Japanese daily Tokyo Shimbun.
The two media organisations are urging the Japanese deputy minister, who is to arrive in Myanmar to investigate the video journalist’s murder, to intervene and secure Min Zaw’s release.
According to Irrawaddy, a news website based in Thailand, three journalists – Kyaw Zeya Tun, 23, who works for the newspaper The Voice, Nay Lin Aung, 20, who works for the weekly 7 Day News, and an unidentified woman journalist employed by Weekly Eleven News – have been missing for several days.
They are believed to have been arrested when the regime began its crackdown on protestors.
Win Ko Ko Latt, a journalist with the Weekly Eleven News, has also been missing since late September. The weekly’s editor said the 27-year-old was covering a demonstration in front of High School N°3 in Mingalataungnyunt, Yangon, when the security forces opened fire on the protestors.
His name appeared on a list of the dead at the Rangoon general hospital.
Reporters Without Borders quoted a Myanmar journalist as saying that the security forces were looking for people carrying cameras around the Sule pagoda in the centre of Yangon and arresting them.
Reporters Without Borders and the BMA said they were told by sources in Myanmar that the military censorship department, known as the Press Scrutiny and Registration Division, was harassing editors to bring out issues of their newspapers and magazines containing propaganda articles.
“Most privately-owned Burmese publications have not appeared or have been closed since the start of the crackdown,” the watchdogs said.
Thousands of people have been arrested since the demonstrations began and at least 10 have been killed though it is believed that the number of casualties could be over 200.