Burma’s Spring: Real lives in turbulent times (21 page)

For Zayar, it was impeccable timing. For several years he had nurtured a dream of starting a political magazine. Until 2011 the dream was pure fantasy, but suddenly he saw that he could actually make it happen. With his colleague Nyan Lin he started
to put together a small, enthusiastic team of reporters who wanted to move beyond the reactive, shallow news stories that were the grist of the Burmese press. ‘We felt that the stories we were writing were like an iceberg,’ Zayar said. ‘The big stuff was under the water. There was breaking news but no one ever thought harder than that, there was no analysis, no in-depth investigations.’ Zayar secured a small grant from an international organisation keen to promote open media in Burma, put down a deposit on office space, advertised for junior reporters and applied to the Ministry of Information for a publishing licence. Burma’s first new political magazine since 1952 was conceived.

*

On 24 August 2012, just four days after half a century of press censorship was lifted, Zayar walked in the rain to the small Indian-run printing shop on 19th street to pick up the first issue of
Maw Kun
. The copy was still warm in his hands as he flipped through the pages, pursing his lips to suppress a smile. Over the years, Burmese magazine editors had tried to circumvent editorial restrictions by focusing on literature and entertainment. Writers had become adept at producing fictional short stories with oblique political messages – and they had to be very oblique because any hint of dissent could have landed both writer and editor in jail. But with its direct reporting of political issues,
Maw Kun
was something completely fresh. The aim was to explain the key issues of the day to the Burmese people, and to influence the decision makers in government who were steering the country’s transformation. Zayar sent complimentary copies of the magazine to twenty-seven ministries in Naypyidaw, and to the president’s office. He made sure the magazine was distributed across Burma’s remote provinces, from the Himalayan foothills of Kachin state to the breezy fishing villages of the Tenasserim. He wanted the reach of this physical, printed magazine to
be as wide as possible – while there had been an explosion of information and political comment online in Burma, only around 1 per cent of the population was connected to the Internet.

The magazine’s crusading, challenging tone was revolutionary. One of the first issues questioned why, with Burma being a diverse, multi-religious society, a daily prayer to Lord Buddha was compulsory in state schools. A front-page story examined the future of Arakan, or Rakhine state, which had been torn apart by ethnic violence. Zayar spent two months researching a story about Burma’s thousands of street children, whose existence had been ignored by the state-controlled press. His reporters carried out an investigation into the safety of the country’s food and the unregulated use of pesticides and fertiliser. With each story, he was breaking new ground. ‘We dig deeper and deeper to investigate issues that are important to the people. We want to get new angles from behind the scenes and reach decision-makers with our findings,’ Zayar said.
Maw Kun
also made some pioneering style innovations, such as introducing the first photo essays to the Burmese press, while Zayar encouraged his reporters to use direct quotes – a standard reporting technique for journalists anywhere else, but unheard of in Burma. ‘Before we would not dare quote what officials actually said from their mouths, that was like looking at them straight in the eyes, it was too bold,’ Zayar said. Instead the journalists would faithfully reproduce the government’s propaganda statements, or copy out the generals’ long speeches verbatim, not daring to edit out a thing.

There were soon signs that
Maw Kun
was attracting an enthusiastic readership. The education minister phoned up and asked for a copy, universities and embassies sought subscriptions, and would-be readers knocked on the door of the magazine’s office to buy issues after they had sold out on the newsstand. Zayar’s influence was
growing. In the old days, when he needed a response from officials to a story he was writing, he would go through the hollow exercise of putting his questions into a letter. He would rarely get a response. Now he could call up ministries directly and get an instant comment. Every ministry had a spokesman, a spin doctor. While many in government may have harboured distaste for this budding era of openness, it was clear the media’s power was on the rise.

*

Zayar may seem like a radical, but he comes from a line of government workers, and would still be one himself, had his wife got her way. His family has for generations been tied to Rangoon’s port, which in the early twentieth century had once been one of the world’s most vibrant hubs, handling exports of rice and timber and imports of European luxuries for colonial civil servants. His grandfather was the Port Authority’s doctor, his father was in the engineering department, his mother in the commercial department. His wife Aye Aye is an accountant and works in the Port Authority’s colonial headquarters, an imposing neo-classical building on the riverfront. Her office, with its twelve-foot-high wooden-shuttered windows flung open to receive the salty breeze, is stacked with piles of papers, some three or four feet high, without a single computer in sight.

Aided by the nepotism that was one of the few perks of a government position, Zayar secured his first job at the Port Authority at the age of eighteen. His first task was clearing up the shipyard. In Rangoon’s unforgiving heat this was tough, backbreaking work and came with a pitiful starting salary of 600 kyat per month – in those days equivalent to just a few dollars. But Zayar rose quickly through the ranks. By the age of twenty-five, he was working in the marine department, regulating the passage
of ocean liners in and out of the port, the youngest employee ever to hold such a position. His official salary was 38,000 kyat, with the opportunity to make it up to 150,000 (only around $150, but far above an average salary) by soliciting tea money. ‘This was standard. The ship operators expected to give them, we expected to receive them. This was just the way the system worked,’ Zayar said. The same year, in 2005, he married Aye Aye, the quiet, serious girl from accounts. ‘It was just after we got married that I talked to my wife. I told her, “This is not my dream. I want to be a journalist. Can you be patient with me for a few years?”’

Aye Aye was shocked. She had expected her marriage to bring her security. Their government positions were effectively jobs for life, and while their salaries were no more than comfortable, they had a guaranteed income and had been allocated a small but well-positioned room just five minutes’ walk from the office. In her mind, her future was mapped out: she hoped to start a family, perhaps save a little and move somewhere a bit bigger. She protested, but Zayar was insistent, and eventually she acquiesced. With no journalistic experience, he was lucky to find his first job, as a reporter for the privately owned newspaper
Modern Weekly
. Zayar’s starting salary was 30,000 kyat, around thirty dollars, with no possibility of making any extra. He was the happiest he had ever been.

*

Zayar’s successful establishment of
Maw Kun
was just one example of the many ways in which it was becoming clear that Aung San Suu Kyi’s release had ushered in a period of unprecedented change. In August 2011, Thein Sein had initiated a dialogue with the freed opposition leader, paving the way, six months later, for her to fight and win an historic by-election in which she emphatically beat a Union Solidarity and
Development Party candidate in the constituency of Kawhmu, south of Rangoon. In all, Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy won forty-three out of forty-five contested seats, proving the party’s popularity to be as strong as ever in its first electoral test since the 1990 victory that the generals ignored. The following month, the former prisoner Suu Kyi took her seat in the lower house of the Naypyidaw parliament alongside nearly four dozen other new MPs from her party.

It was a frustrating time to be leaving Rangoon. My husband’s contract was coming to an end and our family was heading back to London. The city that had been our home for more than three years was revelling in a new era of openness. In a nation of instinctive conversationalists, it was as if a volume switch had been steadily turned up on Burmese chatter, from mute to whispers to guarded exchanges around tea tables to debates, ever louder and more heated. Hands once clasped in rigid fear were released into the air to emphasise important points; eyes could focus directly on the fellow interlocutor rather than dart left and right to check for eavesdroppers. It was no longer likely that you would be denounced and imprisoned for saying the wrong thing. The government had authorised a bill approving peaceful demonstrations, and in Rangoon and Mandalay, demonstrators took to the streets, unafraid, in candlelit marches to protest against chronic power cuts. For most people, freedom from fear – a phrase coined long ago by Aung San Suu Kyi – was the first tangible dividend of Burma’s political transition. ‘We are not afraid,’ Zayar told me. ‘We are free to talk in the teashops, in the street, on the phone. Whatever we want, wherever we want.’

This was the first time that Zayar had told me about his work for the ‘exile media’ – the opposition news organisations that beamed back their uncensored news into Burma through all the years of dictatorship. Zayar had simply wanted to tell Burma’s story. At home, he was thwarted by censorship. The government had no wish
to see a true reflection of its dysfunctional society in the media. So journalists like Zayar had to look beyond Burma’s borders for outlets for their work. He had reported for the Democratic Voice of Burma, and the Delhi-based Burmese website Mizzima. But even these organisations exerted a form of editorial control that Zayar found restricting. ‘What they wanted was not always an accurate picture of our life, of our society. Those organisations were run by activists, and every story had to have an anti-government message. Some of their stories were not balanced.’

*

As editor of his own magazine, free from censorship or editorial interference, Zayar now has independence, a thrilling and unexpected position to be in. ‘We don’t set out to make a point, we set out to look for the truth,’ he says. When he talks about
Maw Kun
, his words tumble out, he’s excited and jumps around topics. His chatter is peppered with nervous laughter – wonder that all this is happening. These days, Zayar can hardly keep up with his own thoughts. The magazine is breaking ground by investigating issues the Burmese press had never dared touch before. By the fourth issue,
Maw Kun
had already run articles about land grabs, sectarian violence, corruption and human trafficking. These would be bread-and-butter stories in similar publications in other developing countries, but in Burma it was new territory. ‘These are subjects we always knew existed, but we couldn’t write about them. We would just lose time, energy and money. We couldn’t touch them in the past.’
Maw Kun
has even won its first award, and Zayar proudly shows me a framed certificate for ‘Excellence in Journalism’ from Burma’s brave, embattled Gay and Lesbian Association, in gratitude for an article Zayar wrote about their struggles. ‘I carried out an investigation into what it’s like to be gay in Burma – the prejudices, the stigma, the problems. Of course there is a big gay community here, but until now it wasn’t acknowledged,’
Zayar said. ‘I tried to write this story four or five years ago, but my editors told me, “Don’t waste your time.”’

*

Zayar was not just writing about the changes in Burma, he was living them. As a journalist, he no longer had to skulk in the shadows. Zayar had always written under a pen name, Saw Thit Htoo, an ethnic Karen name that could be roughly translated as ‘Special New Scoop’. Of course, it would have been easy for the authorities to discover his real identity if they had wanted to; it was just better not to invite trouble. There were so many ways in which the authorities could make life difficult for individuals. For example, under the junta’s rules, every household in Burma had been required to complete a Form 10, a document listing each permanent resident. The Form 10 would be registered with the local office of the State Peace and Development Council. Those listed on the form were the only ones allowed to sleep in the house – any visitors had to seek permission to stay overnight, and if permission was denied they had to leave the house by nine o’clock in the evening and return to the home where they were registered.

The system sat uncomfortably with Burma’s easy-going traditions of hospitality, in which a convivial evening with friends could end without fuss with the unfurling of an extra bamboo sleeping mat for a spontaneous overnight stay. But the rules were strictly enforced. Armed police would carry out unannounced checks of apartments and houses to ensure the sleeping inhabitants matched the household list. These night-time raids, referred to by the population simply as ‘Form 10s’, had a menacing effect. There would be a loud bang on the door. Children curled up inside mosquito nets, grandfathers snoring under electric fans would be suddenly awakened,
confused, the white beams of police torches blinding their sleepy eyes. There would be demands, questions, and, even if everything were in order, it would still be a disquieting experience. A Burmese friend of mine, out of sorts one day, explained her red eyes and uncharacteristic lethargy with a tight smile: ‘Sorry – we got a Form 10 last night.’ Of course, the system was a powerful form of control. In theory, the authorities knew the whereabouts of everyone, every night. Those most frequently targeted for ‘guest checks’ were potential subversives: opposition activists, journalists, musicians, artists and community workers. At times of heightened security concerns and paranoia among the junta, the frequency of raids would increase. As a journalist, Zayar would have been subject to particular scrutiny. ‘My occupation on my Form 10 has always said trader,’ he said. ‘I would never write reporter, it was just too dangerous.’