New York’s Grand Central Station is a gathering point today for people who are coming into town from a little farther away than usual: Burmese dissidents, writers, monks, and musicians are convening to protest the military junta of Senior General Than Shwe. Human Rights Watch has organized a petition and an art and photo installation in Vanderbilt…
At a Tuesday meeting of the International Freedom to Publish Committee (a publishing industry group dedicated to free expression) in New York, Maureen Aung-Thwin handed out pages from Flower News, a Rangoon-based newspaper that had been marked up by Burmese government censors. Burma is the world’s second most censored country, according to a 2006 CPJ…
Top Developments• Some political prisoners freed, but eight journalists still held.• Government censors all print publications, controls broadcasters. Key Statistic 1st: Ranking on CPJ’s Worst Countries to Be a Blogger. Throughout the year, Burma’s ruling junta emphasized its plans to move toward multiparty democracy after decades of military rule, a long-promised transition that dissidents and others…
New York, February 1, 2010—The Burmese government should cease its campaign of intimidation and harassment against the Norway-based Democratic Voice of Burma (DVB), an exile-run television news provider, the Committee to Protect Journalists said today.
New York, January 7, 2010—The Committee to Protect Journalists condemns the harsh sentencing of Hla Hla Win, a broadcast journalist with the Oslo-based Democratic Voice of Burma (DVB). She was sentenced to 20 years in prison on December 30 for violating the vague and draconian Electronic Act.