မွတ္မွတ္ရရ ပို႔စ္ ၁၀၀ ျပည့္တဲ့ ပို႔စ္မွာ ျမန္မာႏိုင္ငံမွာ သတင္းဂ်ာနယ္ေတြကို စာေပစိစစ္ေရး ကင္းလြတ္ခြင့္ ေပးလိုက္တာကို ေရးထားတဲ့ သတင္းကို ျပန္ရွယ္တဲ့ ပို႔စ္ေလး ျဖစ္ေနတဲ့အတြက္ ၀မ္းသာမိ၏။ ပစ္ထားမိေသာ ဘေလာ့ဂ္ေလးအား မၾကာခင္က ျပန္လည္မြမ္းမံေနျခင္း ျဖစ္၏။
သတင္းမီဒီယာမ်ား စာေပလြတ္လပ္ခြင့္ အျပည့္အ၀ ခံစားရေတာ့မည္။ သို႔ေသာ္ သတင္းေထာက္မ်ား စာနယ္ဇင္းသမားမ်ား မျမင္ရေသးေသာ ပံုႏွိပ္ဥပေဒသစ္ကို ျပန္ၾကားေရး၀န္ႀကီးဌာနက သူ႔သေဘာအတိုင္း ေရးဆြဲေနသည္။ မၾကာမီ လႊတ္ေတာ္သို႔ တင္မည္ဟုလည္း ေျပာလိုက္ေသး။ သို႔ေသာ္ ဥပေဒက ျဖဴသည္ မဲသည္ မသိရေသး။ စာနယ္ဇင္း သမားမ်ားကို ဖိႏွိပ္ခ်ဳပ္ျခယ္မည့္ အခ်က္ ဘယ္ေလာက္ပါေလမလဲ။ ၀န္ႀကီးဦးေက်ာ္ဆန္း ျပဳတ္ေတာ့မယ္လို႔ သတင္းထြက္ေနေပမယ့္ သူကေတာ့ ေတာ္ေတာ္ေမႊပါ၏။ သို႔ေသာ္ ဂ်မ္းပံုစတိုင္နဲ႔ ေျပာရပါရင္ ေမာင္မင္းႀကီးသားမ်ား မသြားခင္ အၿပီးျပတ္ စာေပစိစစ္ကို ဖ်က္သိမ္းေပးသြားမယ္ ထင္ပါတယ္။ သို႔ေသာ္ စာေပစိစစ္ေရးအဖြဲ႔ကေတာ့ တရား၀င္ ဖ်က္သိမ္းတယ္လို႔ သတင္းမထုတ္ျပန္ေသးပါဘူး။ ေနာက္ကြယ္က ျကပ္မတ္ေနမယ့္သေဘာ။
ျမန္မာစာနယ္ဇင္းသမားမ်ားသည္ သတၱိေျပာင္ေျမာက္သူမ်ားျဖစ္၏၊ အဖိအႏွိပ္ အျဖတ္အေတာက္ မ်ဳိးစံုေအာက္မွ ရသမွ် တိုက္ပြဲ၀င္ ေရးသားေနသူမ်ားမို႔ ခ်ီးက်ဴးမိပါ၏။ သို႔ေသာ္ ပြဲလန္႔တုန္း ျဖာခင္းတတ္ေသာ၊ ဂုဏ္ေဖာ္တတ္ေသာ စာနယ္ဇင္းသမား ဂ်ာနယ္သမားမ်ားလည္း ရွိ၏။ ျပည္သူ႔အတြက္ သတင္းတင္ျပေနသူဟုဆိုကာ စာနယ္ဇင္းက်င့္၀တ္ကို သိပ္နားမလည္ေသာသူမ်ား အမ်ားအျပားလည္း လူမႈကြန္ယက္ ေဖ့ဘြတ္ စာမ်က္ႏွာမ်ား၊ ၀က္ဆိုက္မ်ားေပၚ အေရးအသားမ်ားမွ ေလ့လာမွတ္သားရပါ၏။ ထိုလူမႈကြန္ယက္မွတဆင့္ ေစတနာမွန္ႏွင့္ လုပ္ေဆာင္ေနေသာ သတင္းေထာက္ အယ္ဒီတာမ်ား၏ လုပ္ေဆာင္ခ်က္၊ ေရးသားခ်က္မ်ားအား လြန္စာ ေလးစားမိပါ၏။ ၉ ရက္ေန႔က သမၼတရံုးအမိန္႔နဲ႔ ဖြဲ႔ေပးထားတဲ့ အျမဴေတစာနယ္ဇင္းေကာင္စီအဖြဲ႔၀င္ ၂၀ ထဲက ေလးပံုတပံုပါေနတဲ့ ျမန္မာႏိုင္ငံစာေရးဆရာအသင္း ဦးေဆာင္သူ ၅ ဦးကလည္း ထိုေကာင္စီကို ကန္႔ကြက္ထား၏။ အဖြဲ႔၀င္အျဖစ္ ခန္႔အပ္ခံရတဲ့ သူေတြရဲ႔ ဆႏၵမပါဘဲ သူတို႔လုပ္ခ်င္ရာလုပ္တဲ့ အက်င့္ဆိုးက မေဖ်ာက္ႏိုင္ေသးသကိုး။
သို႔ေသာ္ တဖက္မွာလည္း စာနယ္ဇင္းသမားမ်ား၏ သတင္းလြတ္လပ္ခြင့္ ေကာ္မတီက သတင္းလြတ္လပ္ခြင့္အျပည့္အ၀ရရန္အတြက္ ဆႏၵထုတ္ေဖာ္ဖို႔ ဆႏၵျပခြင့္ရရန္ ဒီေန႔ စာတင္မည္ ျဖစ္သည္။
Journalists Call for More Freedom as Censorship Lifted
By NYEIN NYEIN / THE IRRAWADDY| August 20, 2012 |
Journalists in Burma welcomed today’s announcement that they will no
longer be required to submit articles to the country’s draconian
censorship board before going to print, but said the move was not enough
to restore full media freedom.
Tint Swe, the head of Burma’s Press Scrutiny and Registration Board (PSRD), told the editors of weekly journals on Monday that effective immediately, their outlets “no longer need to pass the censorship board.”
He added that the easing of restrictions was the result of policy changes within the Ministry of Information. Despite the move, however, laws that severely limit press freedom remain in force.
“It’s a real improvement, but the 2004 Electronics Act, as well as the draconian 1962 Printers and Publishers Registration Act, should also be abolished in order for the fourth pillar to enjoy full press freedom,” said Zaw Thet Htwe, the spokesperson of the Committee for Freedom of the Press (CFP).
In the past, journalists have been given lengthy prison sentences for violating these laws. During the Saffron Revolution, for instance, bloggers and other “citizen journalists” were charged under the Electronics Act for communicating with the exile media through the Internet.
The PSRD itself was formed on Aug. 6, 1964, two years after the 1962 Printers and Publishers Registration Act was imposed by Burma’s newly formed military junta.
In the past year, the PSRD has allowed some non-news publications to go to print without having to go through censorship first, but this is the first time in 48 years that news media have been permitted to do so. Tint Swe said that the new policy applies to 80 news journals and six religious journals that had remained under censorship until today.
However, the journals are still required to write in accordance with 16 guidelines, under which editors and reporters must follow journalistic ethics and ensure that their stories are accurate and don’t harm national security or “the dignity of the state.”
“We will be able to write news story more freely as there is no more scrutiny over our writing. But at the same, the editors will have to take more responsibility for their publications,” said Thiha Saw, the editor of Open News Journal and Myanma Danna magazine.
Especially sensitive, said Thiha Saw, is the subject of corruption—something that many of the country’s top leaders have been accused of.
Any publication that harms the reputation of a government department can still lose it license under the Printers and Publishers Registration Act, and publishers can also face heavy sentences under Burma’s Penal Code if they they are found guilty of inciting the public to unlawful activity.
However, Thiha Saw said the real problem is not the 1962 act, but the numerous “regulations, orders and directives” that have been imposed over five decades of military rule to restrict the media.
The 1962 press law will remain in place until a new media law is passed by Parliament sometime later this year. The Ministry of Information submitted a draft law to the president’s office on Aug. 7 and it will soon be sent to Parliament, said Tint Swe. After this, he added, the new law will be publicized.
The move comes as members of the CFP plan to hold protests to demand media freedom later this week. The CFP was formed three weeks ago to call for an end to censorship and media oppression. Despite the easing of censorship, the protests will go ahead as planned, said CFP spokesperson Zaw Thet Htwe.
The move is also seen as a green light to publishers who want to publish privately owned daily newspapers. “Ending censorship gives us a chance to publish daily newspapers, since the 1962 act does not prevent publishers from publishing newspapers, but the amended regulations did,” said Thiha Saw.
Tint Swe, the head of Burma’s Press Scrutiny and Registration Board (PSRD), told the editors of weekly journals on Monday that effective immediately, their outlets “no longer need to pass the censorship board.”
He added that the easing of restrictions was the result of policy changes within the Ministry of Information. Despite the move, however, laws that severely limit press freedom remain in force.
“It’s a real improvement, but the 2004 Electronics Act, as well as the draconian 1962 Printers and Publishers Registration Act, should also be abolished in order for the fourth pillar to enjoy full press freedom,” said Zaw Thet Htwe, the spokesperson of the Committee for Freedom of the Press (CFP).
In the past, journalists have been given lengthy prison sentences for violating these laws. During the Saffron Revolution, for instance, bloggers and other “citizen journalists” were charged under the Electronics Act for communicating with the exile media through the Internet.
The PSRD itself was formed on Aug. 6, 1964, two years after the 1962 Printers and Publishers Registration Act was imposed by Burma’s newly formed military junta.
In the past year, the PSRD has allowed some non-news publications to go to print without having to go through censorship first, but this is the first time in 48 years that news media have been permitted to do so. Tint Swe said that the new policy applies to 80 news journals and six religious journals that had remained under censorship until today.
However, the journals are still required to write in accordance with 16 guidelines, under which editors and reporters must follow journalistic ethics and ensure that their stories are accurate and don’t harm national security or “the dignity of the state.”
“We will be able to write news story more freely as there is no more scrutiny over our writing. But at the same, the editors will have to take more responsibility for their publications,” said Thiha Saw, the editor of Open News Journal and Myanma Danna magazine.
Especially sensitive, said Thiha Saw, is the subject of corruption—something that many of the country’s top leaders have been accused of.
Any publication that harms the reputation of a government department can still lose it license under the Printers and Publishers Registration Act, and publishers can also face heavy sentences under Burma’s Penal Code if they they are found guilty of inciting the public to unlawful activity.
However, Thiha Saw said the real problem is not the 1962 act, but the numerous “regulations, orders and directives” that have been imposed over five decades of military rule to restrict the media.
The 1962 press law will remain in place until a new media law is passed by Parliament sometime later this year. The Ministry of Information submitted a draft law to the president’s office on Aug. 7 and it will soon be sent to Parliament, said Tint Swe. After this, he added, the new law will be publicized.
The move comes as members of the CFP plan to hold protests to demand media freedom later this week. The CFP was formed three weeks ago to call for an end to censorship and media oppression. Despite the easing of censorship, the protests will go ahead as planned, said CFP spokesperson Zaw Thet Htwe.
The move is also seen as a green light to publishers who want to publish privately owned daily newspapers. “Ending censorship gives us a chance to publish daily newspapers, since the 1962 act does not prevent publishers from publishing newspapers, but the amended regulations did,” said Thiha Saw.
http://www.irrawaddy.org/archives/11933
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