Think about this the next time you can’t get an official on the phone for an interview or have trouble reaching someone:
It could be worse.
You could have Nay Aung’s job.
Nay Aung covers Magwe, a region in the center of the country, for the Myanmar Times.
He started out as a freelancer there in 2012 and is now the regional correspondent.
Magwe’s government, as Nay Aung describes it in this excellent first-person piece in the paper published today, is stuck on junta time.
In three years, he has never been allowed into the region’s parliament. This is at the same time journalists are routinely covering events in the capital, Naypyidaw.
“I’ve never been given an on-the-record interview with a regional government minister,” he adds. “When I call them, they insist that I instead speak to the chief minister, U Phone Maw Shwe, who also never grants interviews. If we want to cover the activities of the government or parliament, for the most part all we can do is copy the statements that are occasionally released.”
Journalists are routinely followed while going about their business. Police are so weirded out by their presence that they have developed a nickname for them: “aliens.” It’s gyo thar in Burmese.
Even when it was virtually impossible to ignore the media – during the coverage of the flooding – Magwe’s government proved remarkably resilient.
“After the president announced Magwe and three other regions had been designated natural disaster-affected areas on July 31, journalists flocked to the regional government office for information and the latest facts and figures on the effects of flooding in Magwe’s western townships,” Nay Aung wrote.
They got nothing. Not a comment. Not a sliver of data.
With this context in mind, it should not come as a surprise that officials also did not comment for Nay Aung’s article.
Good luck Nay Aung. As fellow aliens, we salute you.
Photo of woman reading newspaper in Yangon / Coconuts Yangon
