On 22 May, The Press Scrutiny Board, the censorship body of the Burmese State Peace and Development Council (SPDC), issued a directive forbidding all Burmese newspapers, magazines and journals to publish articles about Thailand or advertisements for Thai products. Journalists were ordered to sign their compliance to this directive, which directly undermines the survival of the Burmese private print media as it is heavily reliant upon Thai advertising.

In June, the SPDC invoked this directive to ban three magazines. Kyi pwar yee was terminated for using "Yodaya" (the former Burmese name for Thailand) in its last edition. Mhyar Nat Maung was guilty of printing an advertisement on a page reserved for SPDC propaganda. Living Color was condemned for including an advertisement for the MK Billiard Company that had been blacklisted by the government for refusing to donate snooker tables to the SPDC-owned Myanmar Billiard and Snooker Association. [...]

Foreign reporters from world media organisations as diverse as BBC Radio, the Far Eastern Economic Review, the French dailies Le Monde and Liberation and the New York Times are on Burma’s black list and are denied visas. Many are labelled "enemies of the country" and "neo-colonialists". The reciprocal bans are of great detriment to the countries’ bilateral relations and have been protested by the Thai Journalists Association (TJA).

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On 19 May, the Interior Minister Colonel Tin Hlaing announced that Burma had no political prisoners, emphasising that the near 200 jailed members of the NLD were "common law criminals". However, there are currently at least 16 journalists held in Burmese jails and, according to Amnesty International, at least 1,500 political prisoners, many of them members of the NLD. Frequently penalised crimes include owning undeclared video equipment, communicating with foreign journalists and passing information to exiled Burmese media organisations. Sanctions are severe and often entail life-threatening conditions and isolation.

The 72 year-old journalist Win Tin is now serving his 13 year of a 21-year jail sentence for anti-government propaganda, subversion and leaking information about appalling prison conditions to the UN. Arrested on 4 July 1989, Win Tin’s incarceration has been marked by ill treatment and multiple health problems. He was instrumental in the hospital strike launched in August to protest conditions and treatment in the hospital, said to be worse than in Rangoon’s Insein prison, to which protesters asked to be returned. A beacon of integrity in a country shadowed by corruption, Win Tin has repeatedly refused the authorities’ offer of freedom in exchange for his resignation from the NLD.

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Burmese reporters operate under the constant watch of the Press Scrutiny Board and the Military Intelligence Services. Phone lines are often tapped, all incoming and outgoing e-mail messages are monitored by the government and there is no public Internet access. Many journalists feel forced to write between the lines using obtuse styles to disguise their true meaning. Unfortunately this baffles their readers as well as the authorities. However, in Burma, where freedom of expression is a virtual non-entity, the number of cases of arrested and imprisoned journalists represents a testament to the many courageous freedom fighters strong enough to resist both state and self-censorship.