On a typical day, Mai Rupa travels by way of his native Shan State, in japanese Myanmar, documenting the affect of conflict.
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 scenario for native civilians dwelling in a conflict 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 mentioned.
“These heartbreaking experiences deeply affected me,” he informed Al Jazeera, “at instances, resulting in severe emotional misery.”
Mai Rupa is one among 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 identify because of the dangers of publicly figuring out as a reporter with one of many final remaining unbiased media retailers nonetheless working contained in the nation.
Most journalists fled Myanmar within the aftermath of the navy’s takeover and the increasing civil conflict. 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 group – proceed reporting from on the bottom, overlaying a area of Myanmar the place a number of ethnic armed teams have for many years fought towards the navy and at instances 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 overlaying pro-democracy protests. When troopers and police raided their workplace within the Shan State capital of Lashio two months later, your 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 could encounter the navy. Day by day was a battle to proceed reporting.
“We couldn’t journey on essential 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 risks, 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 in a position to doc the aftermath from contained in the nation.
The navy 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 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,” mentioned Thu Thu Aung, a public coverage scholar on the College of Oxford who has performed analysis on Myanmar’s post-coup media panorama.
On high of the civil conflict and threats posed by Myanmar’s navy 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 america Company for Worldwide Growth (USAID).
USAID had allotted greater than $268m in direction of supporting unbiased media and the free stream of knowledge in additional than 30 nations around the globe – from Ukraine to Myanmar, in line with 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 scenario 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 stories on Myanmar.
Final week, RFA introduced it was shedding 90 % of its workers and ceasing to provide information within the Tibetan, Burmese, Uighur and Lao languages. VOA has confronted an analogous scenario.
Tin Tin Nyo, managing director of Burma Information Worldwide, a community of 16 native, unbiased media organisations primarily based inside and outdoors Myanmar, mentioned the lack of the Burmese-language providers 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 mentioned.
Many native Myanmar information retailers have been already “struggling to proceed producing dependable data”, on account of the USAID funding cuts introduced in by Trump and executed by Musk’s DOGE, she mentioned.
Some had laid off workers, decreased their programming or suspended operations.
“The downsizing of unbiased media has decreased the capability to watch [false] narratives, present early warnings, and counter propaganda, in the end weakening the pro-democracy motion,” Tin Tin Nyo mentioned.
“When unbiased media fail to provide information, policymakers around the globe shall be unaware of the particular scenario in Myanmar,” she added.
‘Fixed concern 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, in line with 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 underneath the fixed concern of arrest and even dying,” Tin Tin Nyo mentioned.
“The navy junta treats the media and journalists as criminals, particularly focusing on them to silence entry to data.”
Regardless of the risks, Shwe Phee Myay continues to publish information on occasions inside Myanmar.
With one million 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 navy coup in 2021 and the widening civil conflict.
Established in 2019 in Lashio, Shwe Phee Myay was one among dozens of unbiased 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 underneath authoritarian navy rule.
Pre-publication censorship resulted in 2012 amid a wider set of coverage reforms because the navy agreed to permit higher 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 residence.
Nevertheless, the nation’s nascent press freedoms got here under strain through 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 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 group and for which it now faces worldwide fees of genocide.
However the scenario 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-about relocating to Thailand because the scenario 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 collect the information and accumulate footage, we would have liked 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 serious escalation within the Myanmar battle; the navy, which misplaced important territory in consequence, retaliated with air strikes, cluster munitions and shelling. Inside two months, greater than 500,000 folks had been displaced because of the combating.
With few outdoors journalists in a position to 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 permitted 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 individuals are impacted by the conflict, but our efforts appear unrecognised,” editor-in-chief Mai Rukaw mentioned.
“Though we’ve a robust human useful resource base on the bottom, we’re going through important challenges in securing funding to proceed our work.”
Throughout workers conferences, Mai Rukaw has raised the potential of 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 shifting ahead.”
