A favourite debate topic in Indian schools used to be “the pen is mightier than the sword”. Well, the might of the US-backed Israeli devastation of Gaza was streamed live on television and phone screens for months – the first time a genocide unfolded in front of our eyes, hour by hour, with horrifying, haunting images.
Then, on January 20, US President Donald Trump signed a record number of executive orders on his first day in office. With a signature, Trump crushed the hopes of millions of people, took away their only means of survival and condemned them to slow, painful deaths. But this will be invisible, not live-streamed.
We will not see how many HIV/AIDS patients will be deprived of life-saving medicines, how many refugees will be denied resettlement and will live without any hope for a future and how many migrants will lose their jobs. Trump’s executive orders will also affect institutions, organisations and could deprive millions of people access to independent media.
Take the case of Myanmar, considered one of the least free countries in the world. The American nonprofit Freedom House gives Myanmar a score of nine out of 100 on the Global Freedom Index and categorises it as “not free”. This year, I hope Freedom House will measure the impact of Trump’s executive orders on freedom of expression.
Myanmar is ruled by one of the most brutal regimes in the world. It was under military rule for decades but then in 2010, it began transitioning to democracy under the leadership of Daw Aung San Suu Kyi and her National League for Democracy. In 2020, the National League for Democracy won the elections by an overwhelming majority but the military rulers did not hand over power. Instead, in 2021, following a coup, the military seized power and banned all independent media.
Mizzima, one of the media houses, has a presence across social media as well as radio stations and a TV channel. Despite the ban, Mizzima’s journalists and its TV channel did not stop broadcasting and the organisation continues to report from hideouts inside the country as well as from jungles on the Thai-Myanmar border, where the media house had a temporary headquarters. The military regime has tried to bomb Mizzima out of existence and has done everything to shut it down.
The junta could not silence Mizzima but Trump may well have succeeded because as of now, one of his executive orders has stopped all US foreign aid. Mizzima got a letter from Internews, the donor agency that has supported its functioning, informing the organisation that all funding will stop immediately. Internews is part of USAID and dedicated to supporting independent media. Mizzima gets its funds under the project “investing in independent media”.
The immediate impact of the letter is that 86 Burmese employees of Mizzima will have no jobs.
Despite the ban by the junta, the threat of arrest, torture and indefinite detention, Mizzima’s journalists continued to work from hideouts in the country and outside, living in exile – most of them illegally. The salary from Mizzima was their only means of survival. The journalists risk their lives every day – in fact, several times a day – to send out reports on one of the most brutal and violent conflicts in the world today.
After the coup, Mizzima worked out of jungles on the Thai-Myanmar border where it trained journalists. The organisation survived repeated aerial bombings and attacks, and the monsoons in the Burmese jungles. It managed to pay its journalists and staff and defy the junta’s ban because of the support of donors in the US and Europe who support the freedom of speech and independent media.
Now, on the fourth anniversary of the military coup, Mizzima has had to inform its journalists that it will not be able to pay them. It has to suspend its radio services, its TV broadcast and inform satellite companies that it can no longer pay for their services.
Beyond depriving an entire country of a source of independent news, if Mizzima is unable to continue its work, the devastating effects of the conflict will become invisible, allowing the junta to continue its murderous attacks on its own people.
The conflict has already displaced 3.5 million people within Myanmar and forced more than a million others to take refuge in neighbouring Thailand and India. In India, Burmese refugees are at the heart of a contentious row fuelling the months-long violence in Manipur.
Mizzima has not only exposed the brutalities being committed by the junta but also played a crucial yet quiet role in getting humanitarian assistance for the displaced. It has played an important role in furthering Indo-Burmese ties for decades.
The media organisation regularly broadcast Hindi films with Burmese subtitles and created content to promote Indo-Burmese relations. In 2018, Mizzima had signed an agreement with India’s public broadcaster Prasar Bharti for content sharing.
On February 1, the fourth anniversary of the military coup in Myanmar, Mizzima will stop its media. Mizzima survived being bombed and a civil war but will it be able to survive the withdrawal of funds by the US, the self-professed leader of the free world whose Constitution upholds the right to free of speech as the most important of all?
How can the devastating effects of Trump’s executive orders be countered? Americans are fighting against these orders but we in India can also find ways. In this case, why can’t India and Indians show solidarity to organisations like Mizzima? A donation from the Indian film industry or the business community would win goodwill and build a bridge instead of a wall of distrust.
Resisting Military Rule in Burma (1988-2024), Story of Mizzima Media: Born in Exile Banned in Mynamar, is a forthcoming book by Nandita Haksar and Soe Myint.
