Time Mag’s Search for Aung San Suu Kyi

Suu Kyi

Thanks to classmate Caitlin O’Donnell for this link to Time magazine’s cover story this week on Aung San Suu Kyi.

A stylish, descriptive essay-feature, the article doesn’t hide author Hannah Beech’s high regard for “the lady” as it aims to portray the sense of surveillance not only on the political figure but on media professions covering her.

Thus, Beech opens the story describing her rush to avoid the government watchers who followed her across the “haunted, betel-nut-stained streets of old Rangoon, past street-side tailors hunched over ancient sewing machines and open-air bookstalls selling worm-eaten copies of Orwell and Kipling.”

Yes. So Orwell and Kipling, a couple of old British writers, here evoke the musty scent of the colonial British era, or rather the remains and discards from it.  Add this to today’s video on Burma/Myanmar, and we gain some sense of how repressive governments aim to limit — or, at the least, monitor — unwanted media attention.

The magazine also provides this related photo gallery.

Burma: Politics after 63 Years of Independence

Here is a story from The Irrawaddy magazine, which is clearly no friend of the existing military regime in Myanmar, on the attitude of the nation’s rulers as they behold their sovereignty.

Of course, one of the more remarkable developments lately has been the release from house arrest of democracy activist Aung San Suu Kyi, who since then has been continuing her call for improvements in human rights in Myanmar, also traditionally known as Burma.

The magazine’s website does not indicate its political support, though the fact that it publishes in both English and Burmese suggests that it aims to reach both internal and international audiences.  An editorial offers a rebuke to government censors, saying this:

“The temporary suspension of at least nine Burmese journals for carrying news about Aung San Suu Kyi is a huge setback for the growing number of privately owned weekly publications who sought a small but enduring space to bring fresh air to a news-hungry Burmese readership.

“Burma’s censorship board, the Press Scrutiny and Registration Division (PSRD), announced the suspensions on Monday morning.”

The article about independence day also  offers this overview about the state of governance in Burma today:

But while many of Burma’s ethnic minorities continue to consider the Burmese army a brutal occupying force, the military regime harped on once again, as it has for every one of its 22 years in power, about the evil designs of the Western powers.

Taseer also was a Publisher

The Daily Times, an English-language newspaper in Pakistan’s Punjab state, has been busy covering the shooting of Gov. Salmaan Taseer, and for a good reason: among the highly successful leader’s enterprises, he was the paper’s publisher.

You can see here on the paper’s website that Taseer is listed as publisher, and this editorial explains his post, though not at the top of the story.  Clearly, the Daily Times is not playing up the relationship, for any number of reasons. This presents an interesting ethical consideration for journalists.  The political leader whose death they are investigating also is their boss. They have twice the reason to grieve, and yet they must cover a dangerous story about intolerance and violence.

Perhaps objectivity, always a hard-to-identify concept, goes out the window at a time like this. Or not. Make your own judgment as you read this piece quoting the country’s president and this opinion piece that makes this strong and disapointed claim:

The assassination of Taseer is not just the death of an individual. It is a murder of sanity against insanity.