Burma's state-run media have been banned from reporting the US army's involvement in the Haitian earthquake relief effort, according to journalists in the country.
News coverage of the Jan. 12 disaster in Haiti has been muted in Burma in comparison to most other countries, and all mention of the 16,000 US troops and other Western forces deployed in the humanitarian effort has been banned by the state censorship board, the Press Scrutiny and Registration Division (PSRD), the sources in Rangoon and Mandalay said.
Instead, Burmese newspapers highlighted China’s relief work in the Caribbean nation.
“The state-run newspapers did not report on the thousands of American troops conducting a relief mission in Haiti,” a reporter with a private journal in Rangoon told The Irrawaddy on Tuesday.
Burmese journalists said the PSRD routinely rejects any news reports deemed “sensitive” to national interests or state policy. Burmese media were recently prohibited from reporting news of salary increases for government staff and the ongoing war of words between the Chinese government and Internet provider Google.
Both Burma and Haiti are failed states and have suffered from massive natural disasters recently. Southwestern parts of Burma were devastated on May 2-3, 2008, by Cyclone Nargis, which took an estimated 140,000 lives and affected more than two million people.
After Cyclone Nargis hit Burma, the military junta rejected international relief offers and denied the world press access to the affected region. Similar to the Haitian disaster, the US and other Western nations offered Burma humanitarian aid and deployed naval vessels close to its coast.
However, the junta declined the offers due to what is widely perceived to be a fear of foreign intervention in Burmese affairs. The Burmese authorities finally allowed foreign civilian relief workers into the devastated delta region more than a month after the cyclone hit.
Haiti held an international conference on the earthquake disaster in Canada on Monday, less than two weeks after the catastrophe. In Burma's case, it was nearly one month before the military government hosted an aid conference.
Meanwhile, it is feared that several Burmese NGO workers may be among the estimated 150,000 dead in Haiti after a Burmese national's death was reported by a UN source.
The UN source, who requested anonymity when he spoke to The Irrawaddy on Tuesday, said that a Burmese identified only with the first name “Aung” was among the victims of the deadly earthquake. “There were believed to be some Burmese staff with INGOs or UN agencies in Haiti before the earthquake, and they could be among the dead or missing,” he said.
Several Burmese blogs said dozens of Burmese NGO workers were reportedly in Haiti before the disaster. Freedom News Group blog cited a Burmese physician, Myat Thu, as missing, quoting another Burmese national in Port-au-Prince who survived the disaster.
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