September 24, 2007

The Burmese military junta has issued a new order to Rangoon based journals and periodicals to publish a declaration denouncing the ongoing protests led by monks, a Burmese media watch dog in exile said.

The Burma Media Association in a press statement said, the Burmese junta's director of the Press Scrutiny and Registration Division, Major Tint Swe, during a meeting on Sunday instructed the journals and periodicals to publish a declaration stating that they are not interested in the ongoing protest.

"All journals and periodicals were ordered by the Information Ministry to carry an announcement in which we have to state that we are not a part of the association and not interested in taking part in the protest", BMA quoted a journalist, who attended the meeting, as saying.

During the meeting, Tint Swe also told the journalists and editors, whom he had summoned for the meeting, not to associate with the newly formed "Association of Journalists and Artists".

The Association of Journalists and Artists, a group formed on September 20, urged all journalists and editors to support and join the ongoing protests led by monks on Monday.

Buddhists clergy, which has continued protests in military-ruled Burma for a straight week, on Sunday called on all citizens of Burma – from all walks of life – to participate in the protests, turning the clergy's protest into a nation-wide uprising demanding a change in the country's administrative structure.

Tint Swe warned the journalists and editors that by joining the ongoing protests or failing to carry the announcement in their papers would be deemed members of the illegal association, a tactic junta has long used on dissidents to arrest them.

"We have no choice but to follow the order because the director explicitly said that we will be considered as members of an illegal association if we fail to carry the announcement," an editor of a sports journal said.

Meanwhile, the protests in Rangoon and parts of Burma have taken a new turn with more than 10,000 monks and over 1,00,000 civilians marching the streets of Burma's former capital Rangoon.

Protestors today shouted slogans and demanded the release of detained pro-democracy leader Daw Aung San Suu Kyi and all other political prisoners, to lower commodity prices and start a dialogue for national reconciliation in the impoverished southeast Asian nation that has been ruled by military dictators for more than 45 years.

However, the junta, which has a track record of brutally cracking down on public dissent, has so far remained silent with only a few security personnel posted on the street in front of the detained Nobel Peace Laureate Daw Aung San Suu Kyi's lakeside villa on University Avenue.