On a typical day, Mai Rupa travels via his native Shan State, in jap Myanmar, documenting the affect of warfare.
A video journalist with the web information outlet Shwe Phee Myay, he travels to distant cities and villages, gathering 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 folks being injured and civilians dying in entrance of me,” Mai Rupa stated.
“These heartbreaking experiences deeply affected me,” he advised Al Jazeera, “at occasions, resulting in critical emotional misery.”
Mai Rupa is one in every of a small variety of courageous, unbiased journalists nonetheless reporting on the bottom in Myanmar, the place a 2021 navy 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 unbiased media shops nonetheless working contained in the nation.
Most journalists fled Myanmar within the aftermath of the navy’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 workers at Shwe Phee Myay – a Burmese-language outlet, with roots in Shan State’s ethnic Ta’ang neighborhood – 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 navy and at occasions clashed with one another.
Combating to maintain the general public knowledgeable
After Myanmar’s navy launched a coup in February 2021, Shwe Phee Myay’s journalists confronted new dangers.
In March that yr, two reporters with the outlet narrowly escaped arrest whereas masking pro-democracy protests. When troopers and police raided their workplace within the Shan State capital of Lashio two months later, the complete crew had already gone into hiding.
That September, the navy arrested the organisation’s video reporter, Lway M Phuong, for alleged incitement and dissemination of “false information”. She served almost two years in jail. The remainder of the 10-person Shwe Phee Myay crew scattered following her arrest, which got here amid the Myanmar navy’s wider crackdown on the media.
Unfold out throughout northern Shan State within the east of the nation, the information crew initially struggled to proceed their work. They selected to keep away from city areas the place they may encounter the navy. On daily basis was a battle to proceed reporting.
“We couldn’t journey on most important roads, solely again roads,” recounted Hlar Nyiem, an assistant editor with Shwe Phee Myay.
“Typically, we misplaced 4 or 5 work days in per week,” she stated.
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 navy blocked most worldwide media shops 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 data to the surface world.
“These journalists proceed to disclose truths and make folks’s voices heard that the navy regime is determined to silence,” stated 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 high of the civil warfare and threats posed by Myanmar’s navy regime, Myanmar’s journalists have encountered a brand new menace.
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 direction of supporting unbiased media and the free move of knowledge in additional than 30 international locations around the globe – from Ukraine to Myanmar, based on journalism advocacy group Reporters With out Borders.
In February, The Guardian reported on the freezing of USAID funds, creating an “existential disaster” for exiled Myanmar journalists working from the city of Mae Sot, on the nation’s border with Thailand.
The state of affairs worsened additional in mid-March, when the White Home declared plans for the US Company for World Media (USAGM) to cut 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 reports on Myanmar.
Final week, RFA introduced it was shedding 90 p.c of its workers 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, unbiased media organisations based mostly inside and out of doors Myanmar, stated the lack of the Burmese-language companies supplied by VOA and RFA created a “troubling data vacuum”.
Myanmar’s unbiased media sector additionally relied closely on worldwide help, which had already been dwindling, Tin Tin Nyo stated.
Many native Myanmar information shops have been already “struggling to proceed producing dependable data”, because of the USAID funding cuts introduced in by Trump and executed by Musk’s DOGE, she stated.
Some had laid off workers, decreased their programming or suspended operations.
“The downsizing of unbiased 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 stated.
“When unbiased 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 dying’
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 international locations on Reporters With out Borders’ World Press Freedom Index.
“Journalists on the bottom should work underneath the fixed worry of arrest and even dying,” Tin Tin Nyo stated.
“The navy junta treats the media and journalists as criminals, particularly concentrating on them to silence entry to data.”
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 change into much more important because the navy coup in 2021 and the widening civil warfare.
Established in 2019 in Lashio, Shwe Phee Myay was one in every of dozens of unbiased media shops 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 underneath authoritarian navy rule.
Pre-publication censorship led to 2012 amid a wider set of coverage reforms because the navy agreed to permit better political freedom. Journalists who had lived and labored in exile for media shops such because the Democratic Voice of Burma, The Irrawaddy and Mizzima Information started cautiously returning house.
Nonetheless, the nation’s nascent press freedoms got here under strain throughout the time period of Aung San Suu Kyi’s Nationwide League for Democracy authorities, which got here to energy in 2016 because of the navy’s political reforms.
Aung San Suu Kyi’s authorities jailed journalists and blocked unbiased media entry to politically delicate areas together with Rakhine State, the place the navy dedicated a brutal marketing campaign of ethnic cleaning towards the Rohingya neighborhood and for which it now faces worldwide fees of genocide.
However the state of affairs for unbiased journalists dramatically worsened following the 2021 coup. Because the navy 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 of relocating to Thailand because the state of affairs deteriorated after the coup, however these working the information website determined to stay within the nation.
“Our will was to remain on our personal land,” stated Mai Naw Dang, who till lately served because the editor of Burmese-to-English translations.
“Our perspective was that to collect the information and acquire 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 navy outposts in Shan State close to the border with China.
The offensive marked a significant escalation within the Myanmar battle; the navy, which misplaced important territory because of this, retaliated with air strikes, cluster munitions and shelling. Inside two months, greater than 500,000 folks 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 yr, Shwe Phee Myay additionally obtained discover that USAID funds authorised in November have been not coming and it has since decreased area reporting, cancelled coaching and scaled again video information manufacturing.
“We’re taking dangers to report on how persons are impacted by the warfare, but our efforts appear unrecognised,” editor-in-chief Mai Rukaw stated.
“Although we now have a powerful human useful resource base on the bottom, we’re dealing with important challenges in securing funding to proceed our work.”
Throughout workers conferences, Mai Rukaw has raised the opportunity of shutting down Shwe Phee Myay along with his colleagues.
Their response, he stated, was to maintain going even when the cash dries up.
“We at all times ask ourselves: if we cease, who will proceed addressing these points?” he stated.
“That query retains us transferring ahead.”
