Mightier than the Sword: Independent Press in Myanmar
Khuensai Jaiyen
Me and my sidekick Saengjuen Sarawin, who started Independence in 1974 as a wall newspaper and ten years later as a printed paper, were both born with big noses. We were curious, inquisitive and full of questions from day one. More than that, we were bad speakers but, fortunately for us, acceptable writers. Armed with ball points, books and a printing press, a property of the Shan resistance that was fighting against Rangoon, whose present leader General Than Shwe, has just been ranked No.2 after North Korea’s Kim Jong-Il, as the world’s worst dictators, we were given in 1984 the tough job to prove that the pen was indeed mightier than the sword.
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Village of the Generals
One of our most recent reports is Show Business: Rangoon’s War on Drugs in Shan State (December 2003) that has brought us even more attention, for better or for worse. Our other additions include News in English online, News in Thai online, a website in English www.shanland.org, Salween Post, a Thai newsletter, News in Cartoons online and News in Pictures online.
Despite the extent of the work, SHAN staff is almost unthinkably small: 4 full-timers, 5 part-timers (1 Thai re-writer, 1 cartoonist and 3 “reporters”) and 5 “stringers”. We are certainly in want of reinforcement.
The situation has become somewhat desperate around the “National Convention” where Rangoon’s hand-picked delegates are going to spend some time – some say 4 months – together, in a concentration-camp-like venue, where prying busybodies like SHAN are likely to be denied entry.
SHAN’s answer to this is to get hold of better communications equipment, something to offset our low manpower, so, we hope, we can obtain information behind one of the last remaining bamboo curtain countries.
Thanks to WACC, we now have the means to acquire the equipment. All we need now are some (watch) dogs with the guts and skill to handle it.
Link:
www.shanland.org
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