Mizzima Editor-in-Chief dedicates East-West Center award to journalists reporting on Myanmar

01 July 2022
Mizzima Editor-in-Chief dedicates East-West Center award to journalists reporting on Myanmar
Mizzima Editor-in-Chief Soe Myint speaks to the East-West Centre

Mizzima Editor-in-Chief and founder Soe Myint dedicated his East-West Center’s International Media Conference award this week to his fellow journalists at Mizzima and other independent media organizations reporting on the crisis in Myanmar.

At an awards banquet held as part of the East-West Center’s International Media Conference this week in Honolulu, the Center recognized seven journalists on Tuesday who exemplify the impact that EWC media programme participants have had throughout Asia and the Pacific.

Since they began in 2014, the “Journalists of Courage and Impact” awards have been given out at each of the Center’s biennial media conferences, with 22 recipients thus far. After accepting their awards from EWC President Suzanne Vares-Lum and former Hawaii Governor John Waihe‘e, a member of the Center’s governing board, this year’s honorees spoke about the importance of the free press in this era of distrust, linking back to the conference theme of “Connecting in a Zero-Trust World.”

Speaking in a prerecorded video message, Soe Myint, Editor-in-Chief of Myanmarʻs Mizzima Media Group, spoke about his 24-year exile during the countryʻs previous military dictatorship, and how the recent coup forced Mizzima to set up temporary headquarters in the jungle after the military regime shut down their offices in Yangon, arresting a number of staff.

Soe Myint told the audience that having to leave Yangon after last year’s military coup did not come entirely as a surprise. The military had been putting forth a campaign of disinformation to justify a possible coup ever since the November 2020 elections.

But that does not mean that abandoning Mizzima’s Yangon headquarters came easy.

“On 6 February 2021, five days after the coup, I took a last photograph of Mizzima’s headquarters in Yangon. It was a very sad moment for me personally. We had worked so hard to get to where we were. We had built a lot over the years. It was the place where we spent most of our daily time. I looked at the office and Mizzima signboard, not knowing when we will be able to return,” he said. Soe Myint recalled when he first left Rangoon for the jungles to fight for democracy in 1988, when he was a member of the student protests at Rangoon University.

“At that time, I also didn’t know when I would be able to return. But I left a note for my mother telling her it would not be long, probably six months. It turned out to be 24 years. And now we face a similar unknown timeline,” he said.

Soe Myint talked of the difficulty facing Myanmar in the wake of the coup and the problems for independent media covering the crisis.

“Mizzima has had several journalists and staff arrested and tortured by the Myanmar military regime, including co-founder Daw Thin Thin Aung,” he said, adding he had his own personal challenges fleeing to the jungle as he had recently had cancer surgery.

“I am often asked what keeps me going, and I respond that it is the youth who surround me in our work at Mizzima,” he said. “They are always encouraging me to keep going.”

The Mizzima founder said he was convinced that democracy would return to Myanmar again, noting the Mizzima rallying call: “We will meet again in Yangon.”

Other East-West Center awardees were Kunda Dixit, chief editor of the Nepali Times, Afghan journalist Parwiz Kawa, Dilrukshi Handunnetti, executive director at the Colombo-based Center for Investigative Reporting, Honolulu newspaperman Jerry Burris, Dr. Lagipoiva Cherelle Jackson, editor of Pacific Environment Weekly in Sāmoa, and Helen Altonn, a retired reporter for the former Honolulu Star-Bulletin.