( Reuters) – Hiding from Myanmar’s authorities, reporter Aung Marm Oo refuses to conceal his anger with the civilian federal government led by Nobel Laureate Aung San Suu Kyi as his nation prepares for an election later this year.
FILE PHOTO: Pictures of Myanmar State Therapist Aung San Suu Kyi hung in a shop in Yangon, Myanmar, January 23,2020 REUTERS/Ann Wang
” Democracy is already dead,” the 37- year-old editor-in-chief of Advancement Media Group (DMG) informed Reuters from a place he asked to keep secret.
” They blocked media, restrict media firms, banned news, punish journalists. Media is the lifeblood of democracy in the nation. Without media, how can democracy make it through?”
When Suu Kyi was launched from house arrest by a military junta in 2010, Aung Marm Oo was a trainee activist living in exile. Her release helped convince him to return house and get in journalism.
The 2016 election that brought Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy (NLD) to power ended half a century of military rule. The generals retain strong impact under a constitution that schedules sweeping powers for the military, and 25%of seats in parliament for its appointees.
Aung Hla Tun, deputy minister for information, said the government had revoked some overbearing laws and was preparing both a right to information law and a hate speech law.
Expectations of the first democratic federal government were “extremely high and really impractical” offered “accumulated bad legacies and challenges our predecessors had left us”, he stated.
” We’re not efficient in changing all these things dramatically in 3 or 4 years,” he stated in an e-mail, adding that there was a requirement to promote trust and co