On a typical day, Mai Rupa travels by his native Shan State, in japanese Myanmar, documenting the impression of struggle.
A video journalist with the net information outlet Shwe Phee Myay, he travels to distant cities and villages, accumulating footage and conducting interviews on tales starting from battle updates to the scenario for native civilians residing in a struggle zone.
His job is fraught with dangers. Roads are strewn with landmines and there are occasions when he has taken cowl from aerial bombing and artillery shelling.
“I’ve witnessed numerous folks being injured and civilians dying in entrance of me,” Mai Rupa mentioned.
“These heartbreaking experiences deeply affected me,” he advised Al Jazeera, “at occasions, resulting in critical emotional misery.”
Mai Rupa is certainly one of a small variety of courageous, impartial journalists nonetheless reporting on the bottom in Myanmar, the place a 2021 army coup shattered the nation’s fragile transition to democracy and obliterated media freedoms.
Like his colleagues at Shwe Phee Myay – a reputation which refers to Shan State’s wealthy historical past of tea cultivation – Mai Rupa prefers to go by a pen identify because of the dangers of publicly figuring out as a reporter with one of many final remaining impartial media retailers nonetheless working contained in the nation.
Most journalists fled Myanmar within the aftermath of the army’s takeover and the increasing civil struggle. Some proceed their protection by making cross-border journeys from work bases in neighbouring Thailand and India.
However employees at Shwe Phee Myay – a Burmese-language outlet, with roots in Shan State’s ethnic Ta’ang neighborhood – proceed reporting from on the bottom, overlaying a area of Myanmar the place a number of ethnic armed teams have for many years fought towards the army and at occasions clashed with one another.
Preventing to maintain the general public knowledgeable
After Myanmar’s army launched a coup in February 2021, Shwe Phee Myay’s journalists confronted new dangers.
In March that yr, two reporters with the outlet narrowly escaped arrest whereas overlaying pro-democracy protests. When troopers and police raided their workplace within the Shan State capital of Lashio two months later, the whole staff had already gone into hiding.
That September, the army arrested the organisation’s video reporter, Lway M Phuong, for alleged incitement and dissemination of “false information”. She served practically two years in jail. The remainder of the 10-person Shwe Phee Myay staff scattered following her arrest, which got here amid the Myanmar army’s wider crackdown on the media.
Unfold out throughout northern Shan State within the east of the nation, the information staff initially struggled to proceed their work. They selected to keep away from city areas the place they could encounter the army. Each day was a wrestle to proceed reporting.
“We couldn’t journey on primary roads, solely again roads,” recounted Hlar Nyiem, an assistant editor with Shwe Phee Myay.
“Generally, we misplaced 4 or 5 work days in per week,” she mentioned.
Regardless of the hazards, Shwe Phee Myay’s reporters continued with their clandestine work to maintain the general public knowledgeable.
When a magnitude 7.7 earthquake hit central Myanmar on March 28, killing greater than 3,800 folks, Shwe Phee Myay’s journalists have been among the many few in a position to doc the aftermath from contained in the nation.
The army blocked most worldwide media retailers from accessing earthquake-affected areas, citing difficulties with journey and lodging, and the few native reporters nonetheless working secretly within the nation took nice dangers to get data to the surface world.
“These journalists proceed to disclose truths and make folks’s voices heard that the army regime is determined to silence,” mentioned Thu Thu Aung, a public coverage scholar on the College of Oxford who has performed analysis on Myanmar’s post-coup media panorama.
On prime of the civil struggle and threats posed by Myanmar’s army regime, Myanmar’s journalists have encountered a brand new risk.
In January, the administration of US President Donald Trump and his billionaire confidante Elon Musk’s Division of Authorities Effectivity (DOGE) started dismantling the USA Company for Worldwide Growth (USAID).
USAID had allotted greater than $268m in direction of supporting impartial media and the free circulate of data in additional than 30 international locations world wide – from Ukraine to Myanmar, in response to journalism advocacy group Reporters With out Borders.
In February, The Guardian reported on the freezing of USAID funds, creating an “existential disaster” for exiled Myanmar journalists working from the city of Mae Sot, on the nation’s border with Thailand.
The scenario worsened additional in mid-March, when the White Home declared plans for the US Company for International Media (USAGM) to scale back operations to the naked minimal. USAGM oversees – amongst others – the Voice of America and Radio Free Asia, which have been each main suppliers of reports on Myanmar.
Final week, RFA introduced it was shedding 90 p.c of its employees and ceasing to provide information within the Tibetan, Burmese, Uighur and Lao languages. VOA has confronted an analogous scenario.
Tin Tin Nyo, managing director of Burma Information Worldwide, a community of 16 native, impartial media organisations based mostly inside and outdoors Myanmar, mentioned the lack of the Burmese-language companies offered by VOA and RFA created a “troubling data vacuum”.
Myanmar’s impartial media sector additionally relied closely on worldwide help, which had already been dwindling, Tin Tin Nyo mentioned.
Many native Myanmar information retailers have been already “struggling to proceed producing dependable data”, on account of the USAID funding cuts introduced in by Trump and executed by Musk’s DOGE, she mentioned.
Some had laid off employees, decreased their programming or suspended operations.
“The downsizing of impartial media has decreased the capability to observe [false] narratives, present early warnings, and counter propaganda, finally weakening the pro-democracy motion,” Tin Tin Nyo mentioned.
“When impartial media fail to provide information, policymakers world wide shall be unaware of the particular scenario in Myanmar,” she added.
‘Fixed concern of arrest and even loss of life’
At the moment, 35 journalists stay imprisoned in Myanmar, making it the world’s third-worst jailer of journalists after China and Israel, in response to the Committee to Defend Journalists.
The nation is ranked 169th out of 180 international locations on Reporters With out Borders’ World Press Freedom Index.
“Journalists on the bottom should work beneath the fixed concern of arrest and even loss of life,” Tin Tin Nyo mentioned.
“The army junta treats the media and journalists as criminals, particularly focusing on them to silence entry to data.”
Regardless of the hazards, Shwe Phee Myay continues to publish information on occasions inside Myanmar.
With 1,000,000 followers on Fb – the digital platform the place most individuals in Myanmar get their information – Shwe Phee Myay’s protection has develop into much more essential for the reason that army coup in 2021 and the widening civil struggle.
Established in 2019 in Lashio, Shwe Phee Myay was certainly one of dozens of impartial media retailers which emerged in Myanmar throughout a decade-long political opening, which started in 2011 with the nation’s emergence from a half-century of relative worldwide isolation beneath authoritarian army rule.
Pre-publication censorship led to 2012 amid a wider set of coverage reforms because the army agreed to permit larger political freedom. Journalists who had lived and labored in exile for media retailers such because the Democratic Voice of Burma, The Irrawaddy and Mizzima Information started cautiously returning house.
Nevertheless, the nation’s nascent press freedoms got here beneath pressure throughout the time period of Aung San Suu Kyi’s Nationwide League for Democracy authorities, which got here to energy in 2016 on account of the army’s political reforms.
Aung San Suu Kyi’s authorities jailed journalists and blocked impartial media entry to politically delicate areas together with Rakhine State, the place the army dedicated a brutal marketing campaign of ethnic cleaning towards the Rohingya neighborhood and for which it now faces worldwide costs of genocide.
However the scenario for impartial journalists dramatically worsened following the 2021 coup. Because the army violently cracked down on peaceable protests towards the generals seizing energy, it restricted the web, revoked media licences and arrested dozens of journalists. That violence triggered an armed rebellion throughout Myanmar.
‘If we cease, who will proceed addressing these points?’
Shwe Phee Myay briefly thought-about relocating to Thailand because the scenario deteriorated after the coup, however these working the information website determined to stay within the nation.
“Our will was to remain on our personal land,” mentioned Mai Naw Dang, who till just lately served because the editor of Burmese-to-English translations.
“Our perspective was that to assemble the information and accumulate footage, we wanted to be right here.”
Their work then took on new depth in October 2023, when an alliance of ethnic armed organisations launched a shock assault on army outposts in Shan State close to the border with China.
The offensive marked a serious escalation within the Myanmar battle; the army, which misplaced important territory in consequence, retaliated with air strikes, cluster munitions and shelling. Inside two months, greater than 500,000 folks had been displaced because of the combating.
With few outdoors journalists in a position to entry northern Shan State, Shwe Phee Myay was uniquely positioned to cowl the disaster.
Then in January this yr, Shwe Phee Myay additionally acquired discover that USAID funds permitted in November have been now not coming and it has since decreased area reporting, cancelled coaching and scaled again video information manufacturing.
“We’re taking dangers to report on how individuals are impacted by the struggle, but our efforts appear unrecognised,” editor-in-chief Mai Rukaw mentioned.
“Despite the fact that now we have a powerful human useful resource base on the bottom, we’re going through important challenges in securing funding to proceed our work.”
Throughout employees conferences, Mai Rukaw has raised the potential for shutting down Shwe Phee Myay together with his colleagues.
Their response, he mentioned, was to maintain going even when the cash dries up.
“We all the time ask ourselves: if we cease, who will proceed addressing these points?” he mentioned.
“That query retains us shifting ahead.”