Freedom of the Press | USAID and Myanmar: No Other Choice

Like a berserker, the new US President Donald Trump is paralyzing ministries, institutions and authorities. One of the first victims of Trump's fury was USAID . The United States development agency financed humanitarian aid, health services, human rights projects and media, among other things, directly or indirectly through partner organizations in poorer parts of the world. For example, exiled media from Myanmar. The overnight announcement of a halt to financial aid from USAID threatens the existence of many of these media.

The news portal "Mizzima," for example, has been hit hard. "The USAID freeze affects 20 to 25 percent of our annual budget for 2025," says Soe Myint, editor-in-chief of "Mizzima," to the "nd." To make matters worse, the other donor organizations and countries have not yet decided on their financial contribution to our annual budget for 2025. Mizzima, says Soe Myint, reaches 30 million readers and viewers every day through its websites and other digital media platforms such as Facebook and YouTube. The situation is similarly bleak for the broadcaster DVB. The funding freeze affects not only the employees, "but also the programs," says editor-in-chief Mon Mon Myat.

Since the coup on February 1, 2021, Myanmar has once again become one of the most dangerous countries in the world for journalists. Media outlets such as "Mizzima", DVB, "Frontier Myanmar" and "Irrawaddy", which only returned to Myanmar from exile after the country opened up in 2012, had to quickly pack their things and leave the country. USAID's halt jeopardizes the importance of exile media as an important source of information for the Myanmar diaspora, the people of Myanmar and the international community.

By 2023, USAID had funded the training and support of 6,200 journalists worldwide, supported 707 nongovernmental news agencies, and promoted 279 civil society organizations dedicated to strengthening independent media in more than 30 countries, from Iran to Russia and Myanmar, according to USAID data released by Reporters Without Borders (RSF) before its website was shut down.

Since the coup, Myanmar's military junta has killed more than 6,000 people, arbitrarily arrested more than 20,000 and displaced 3.5 million people into their own country, according to Amnesty International. The military is carrying out large-scale and systematic attacks on the civilian population across the country and is bombing schools, hospitals and religious buildings.

Danny Fenster knows from his own experience how dangerous the work of journalists in Myanmar is. "You can be arrested or killed at any time." The editor of the magazine "Frontier Myanmar" was arrested in Yangon shortly after the 2021 coup and spent eight months in inhumane conditions in the notorious Insein prison in Yangon. A few days after being sentenced to eleven years in prison for sedition in November 2021, the 40-year-old was released through the intervention of former UN ambassador Bill Richardson. "Frontier Myanmar" also works in exile in Chiang Mai and is not affected by the USAID funding freeze, as editor-in-chief Ben Dunant told the "nd".

Despite the danger to life and limb, journalists continue to cross the green border into Myanmar to report on the civil war, the atrocities committed by the junta, the bombing of villages, and the tens of thousands of internally displaced people . One of these journalists is the photojournalist Mar Maw, who uses his camera to document his compatriots' fight against the junta and the military for (exile) media at hotspots of the civil war. When we spoke to him in a café in Chiang Mai a few months ago, Mar Naw had just returned from Myanmar. "I was travelling with units of the revolutionary forces," says the 29-year-old, who worked as a photojournalist for the Myanmar Times until the coup. "When the editors accepted the junta's order to only refer to them by their self-chosen name, the 'State Administration Council,' I and 30 of my colleagues resigned that same day," says Mar Naw.

The junta is waging a cyber war against the exile media. "We are experiencing cyber attacks again and again. They have increased since October 2023," says Aung Zaw, editor-in-chief and founder of the oldest exile media outlet, the "Irrawaddy," whose budget was 35 percent dependent on USAID.

In October 2023, the armed resistance launched an offensive against the junta, which has since put the military on the defensive. "The cyberattacks come via thousands of Chinese IP addresses," says Aung Zaw, but adds with a smile: "We have a very good IT team to defend ourselves."

Virtual private networks (VPNs) are indispensable in Myanmar for circumventing censorship and internet shutdowns, both for obtaining information and for sending information, photos and videos from the many citizen journalists to the (exiled) media outside the country. This is a thorn in the side of the junta. It is taking massive action against VPNs with internet blocks, police and bans. "We have lost many of our users because of this," complains Mon Mon Myat. But that has not stopped the 20 editors in the spacey editorial office in a warehouse on the outskirts of Chiang Mai from continuing to report on the website, Facebook and in daily YouTube news broadcasts. "We have already trained around 200 compatriots in Myanmar to become citizen journalists," says Mon Mon Myat.

For Soe Myint of "Mizzima," giving up is not an option either, despite the USAID shutdown. "We have no choice but to continue our daily media coverage of the situation in Myanmar via our multimedia platforms," ​​emphasizes Soe Myint, adding: "It is our duty to report and do our journalistic work, no matter what the situation and wherever we are."

Meanwhile, in Myanmar, resistance militias, aid workers and exiled media are using billionaire Elon Musk's Starlink satellites to circumvent censorship and internet blocks. Starlink is banned in Myanmar, but in the areas liberated from the resistance, cafes advertise with "Here's Starlink," says David Mathieson. The independent Myanmar analyst, who lives in Chiang Mai, has the utmost respect for the exiled media and their (citizen) journalists in Myanmar: "They are the eyes and ears of the resistance."