Guwahati: Interviewing a leader of an armed outfit in Myanmar (formerly known as Burma) and publishing its substance through a portal can be termed as a serious offence against the concerned editor. The fate of Khaing Mrat Kyaw, chief editor of Narinjara news portal, based in Sittwe of Rakhine (also known as Arakan) province in western Myanmar indicates the state of media’s freedom in the southeast Asian country. While the world is fighting against Covid-19 pandemic with over a hundred thousand casualties, the Myanmar authorities have framed charges of glorifying terrorism against the editor for uploading an interview with Khaing Thu Ka, spokesperson of Arakan Army, an ethnic revolutionary group, which Myanmar federal government in NayPieTaw recently denounced as a terrorist organization. The rebels are reportedly fighting for a homeland for Buddhist Rakhine people in the line of ancient Arakan Kingdom. Rich in natural resources, the Arakan province drew the attention of international media three years back with Rohingya Muslim issues. Myanmar military, known as Tatmadaw, launched a violent campaign against Rohingya people forcing over seven hundred thousand Muslim settlers to leave for Bangladesh. Presently the Arakanese editor is hiding to avoid impending arrest. The police on 31 March 2020 raided Narinjara’s office in Sittwe and even temporarily detained three scribes namely Thein Zaw, Aung Lin Htun and Htun Khaing for questioning. Later on 7 April, they reached to the apartment belonged to KM Kyaw in Yangon and also interrogated his wife on his where about.
Narinjara group that publishes news bulletins both in Burmese and English covers various issues particularly related to Rakhine including the ongoing armed conflicts between Myanmar security personnel and rebel ethnic outfits who remain active in Arakan and Chin provinces.
Various media rights bodies have criticized the NayPieTaw regime for charging KM Kyaw under the counter-terrorism laws and urged Myanmar’s special branch to immediately withdraw the procedures. Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) stated that if convicted, the editor would face at least 10 years of imprisonment with heavy fines.
CPJ representative Shawn Crispin commented that the authority should stop threatening journalists who were covering enduring armed conflict and rebel groups in Myanmar. Branding those journalists as terrorists is none other than assaulting the press freedom, she asserted. Earlier Myanmar Press Council also sent a letter to the President Win Myint along with State counselor Aung San Suu Kyi with an appeal to withdraw charges against KM Kyaw.
25 Feb 2010 - 11:18pm | editor
ULFA publicity secretary Mithinga Daimary was freed on Thursday 48 hours after he procured bail from a local TADA court. The jailed ULFA top gun who has been languishing in Guwahati after he was...
25 Jun 2018 - 2:26pm | AT Kokrajhar Bureau
KOKRAJHAR: In a tragic incident two young girls were reportedly drowned in Longa River under Dotma Police Station at Maoriagaon village in Kokrajhar on Saturday evening. While one of...
11 May 2008 - 2:59am | Nava Thakuria
Guwahati Press Club has decided to study the problem of garbage management in the largest city of Northeast with special reference to bio-medical wastes. This is a known fact that Guwahati, the...
8 Sep 2008 - 4:44am | Nanda Kirati Dewan
Who wasn't the part of a grand celebration that this years edition of Techniche08 - from scientists of NASA to archeologists from France, everyone added a new flavor to the extravagant techno-...
The recently concluded by-polls for 48 legislative assembly constituencies in 14 States (along with two Parliamentary constituencies in Kerala and Maharashtra) divulged an important fact that no less than 41 assembly seats needed the special elections as those were vacated by the respective legislators after they were elected to the lower house of Indian Parliament. The representatives of different political parties (irrespective of their ideologies or position in the governments) participated in the last general elections and succeeded to be lawmakers in the 18th Lok Sabha.
One may wonder how all these members of State legislative assemblies turned Parliamentarians...
Geneva based the Press Emblem Campaign (PEC), a global organization advocating for media safety and rights, has expressed deep concern over the ongoing violence against journalists in Pakistan. The latest victim, Janan Hussain (40), was killed in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa near the Afghan border on November 20, during an ambush in the Kurram area that claimed the lives of 42 Shiite Muslims. Hussain, a journalist with Channel 365 and a member of the Parachinar Press Club, is the 11th media worker killed in Pakistan this year.
"Janan Hussain's murder marks the 129th journalist killed globally since January 1, highlighting the grim reality of impunity in such cases," said Blaise Lempen, President...
The Press Emblem Campaign (PEC) awarded its annual prize for the protection of journalists to Palestinian journalist Iyad Alasttal. This recognition comes amidst the unprecedented loss of over 150 Palestinian and Lebanese journalists since October 7, 2023, marking one of the highest tolls in such a short period in a conflict. The PEC dedicated the prize to the memory of these journalists who risk their lives daily.
Iyad Alasttal, a journalist from Gaza, was forced to flee due to Israeli reprisals following the Hamas attack on October 7, 2023. Alasttal, who launched the Gaza Stories project in 2019, has been chronicling life in Gaza and reporting for French and Western media outlets....
On the midnight of August 31, 2019, an extraordinary bureaucrat unveiled the contentious National Register of Citizens (NRC) in Assam, amidst a large gathering of eager media personnel in Guwahati. Prateek Hajela, the then State NRC coordinator, not only explained various features of the NRC to the assembled reporters but also declared the supplementary list as the definitive one. Some television journalists, excited by the so-called "extraordinary work" of the technocrat-turned-IAS officer, went as far as to applaud Hajela as a superhero.
However, the ground reality paints a different picture. The Assam NRC has never been endorsed—nor is it today—by the Registrar General of India (RGI...
It’s shocking to report that a number of Guwahati-based scribes and RTI (right to information) activists have been facing interrogation and even arrest by Assam chief minister’s special vigilance cell following the allegations of Sewali Devi Sharma, the prime accused in Rs 105 crore State council of educational research and training (SCERT) scam, as being blackmailers to her in different occasions. The arrestees include a female reporter (identified as Pujamoni Das alias Honey Kashyap, who reportedly took a large volume of money from Ms Sharma) along with a satellite news channel reporter named Bhaskarjoti Hazarika. RTI activists namely Rabijit Gogoi (who pretended to be a...
Can we imagine a world of zero poverty, zero unemployment, and zero carbon emissions with a new approach in post-corona economics! Ask Nobel laureate Professor Muhammad Yunus and he will answer in the affirmative. The university professor turned revolutionary banker believes that the human race should not only dream about a safer world by reducing global warming, wealth concentration and unemployment, but also work in that direction with personal and collective capacities.
In his latest book titled ‘A World of Three Zeros’, Prof Yunus proposes a new economic system focusing on every human being as an entrepreneur in the making. He believes that humans are not born to work only for...
Guwahati: Assam is all set to host first sustainable financial working group (SFWG) meeting and Youth 20 inception meeting as part of India's year-long G20 presidency, where it is meticulously chalked out various tour programs that would help in promoting the State’s rich biodiversity and socio-cultural heritage in international arena. The authorities have completed the preparation to welcome the foreign delegates to the State.
Guwahati is adorned with digital wall painting, thematic gates, flags of G 20 countries, LED cut-outs, standees, hoarding, etc as part of branding and beautification. The government has also completed the arrangement for the visiting delegates to places of...
Guwahati: India observes National Press Day on 16 November with an aim to pay tributes to everyone who contributed to the growth of print media along with its mentor & watchdog the Press Council of India (PCI). Moreover, it’s also an occasion for the practicing media persons to introspect seriously over their noble profession where it has been heading in the post-Covid-19 pandemic era. Since its inception and functioning, the PCI continues to symbolize a free and responsible press in the largest democracy in the world. Among all press or media councils, functioning in various countries, the PCI is recognised as a unique entity that exercises authority over the media and also safeguards...
Participating in a debate on satellite television or digital channels needs some homeworks to make the deliberations short and clear. Unless you face an arrogant anchor and unruly participants, the experience in talk shows normally emerges as an intriguing one. It happened to me, as I had recently participated in a digital media discussion on the pertinent issue of National Register of Citizens (NRC) in Assam, where the prime guest was none other than the immediate past State NRC coordinator Hitesh Dev Sarma. The talk show host Dikshit Sharma put the questions in a clever way so that the issue comes alive and my part was just to interpret Dev Sarma’s version for clarity to the valued...
Guwahati: It was an amazing experience to attend the foundation day of a 25 year old press club in central Assam on a lazy Sunday, where a number of senior citizens along with rural scribes and novice journalists were waiting to listen to my speech. It’s easier to address a journalist’s meet- where we can discuss many issues with liberties, but while the audience includes respected senior citizens and young people, it becomes a difficult task to speak to them together.
First, the question that arises, how much should I highlight the eroding credibility of the mainstream media around India in general and Assam in particular and secondly what may be the role of social (alternate/digital)...
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