denounce its hegemonic media agenda. However, institutionally all the key elements of ISA are in the hands of the coup leaders. Machines of propaganda are spreading the speeches made by the new head of state and cabinet members, and are trying to convince the people that the military leaders are visionary harbingers of change. The objectives of the coup are announced in the press every day as follows: (a) To build a Union based on democracy and federalism, through a disciplined and genuine multiparty democratic system that is fair and just. (b) To emphasize the achievement of enduring peace for the entire nation in line with the Nationwide Ceasefire Agreement (NCA). (c) To continue implementing the principle of peaceful co-existence among countries through an independent, active and non-aligned foreign policy.29 It also declared that an election would be held as soon as the country is stable, and promised that it was likely to happen within two years. In order to hide the chaos in the social and economic sphere, the state-run TV channels are painting a rosy picture of economic growth, normalization of international corporation, improvement in the healthcare sector, restoration of tourism, and the potential for a peaceful reconciliatory future. The real picture is almost the exact inverse: killing and arresting protesters, facing diplomatic failure on the international stage, and dashed hopes for economic recovery in the global post-COVID-19 era. However, the military is far from being able to contain the outbursts of anger on social media and the consumer boycott by users. The military, which tries to block outside news from reaching its military compound by restricting soldiers’ mobile phone use as well as the use of social media and satellite dishes in their residential compound, distorted the information flow by creating fake news and propaganda pages on social media.30 Since the beginning of the coup, military families were forced to be disconnected from the outside world and were kept in the dark about public grievances and the cries from the bloodbaths happening outside of their residential compounds. According to Burma Monitor,31 new information channels are created for the army’s supporters, in which the admins can regularly feed hate speech and fake news in order to disrupt the voices of citizen journalists and hide the atrocities of the army from different areas.32 Moreover, it is also common to see that military-sponsored content generators take advantage by using Facebook’s “share and comment” functions to strategically distort the facts presented by journalists. With abusive comments, they simply induce the audience’s distraction under the pages of critical media. Sharpening the teeth of the ISA, the coup council’s press conferences have also invited staff from racist media organizations, which have reportedly been spreading hate speech against Muslims in recent years. Parts of the audience who are now acknowledged as reporters were never previously part of the popular news media, and they were rather known as key organizers or participants in various Tatmadaw supporters’ rallies of previous years. 33 While the spokesperson of the coup council, General Zaw Min Tun, has been accusing independent media outlets of being troublemakers, the press conferences are a venue for staged interviews between himself and these military-friendly reporters. The state-owned media are portraying the coup leader, Senior General Min Aung Hlaing, as something similar to what Lintner described as “feudal”. The state-run media platforms are manoeuvring around designations that signify “traditional authoritarian values where the king was God”.34 Media professionals, who were already suffering in the pre-coup days, now face various kinds of threat and are seeing their careers being diminished. Many of them are being threatened with legal action under penal code section 505(a). Covering news of the civil war — that involves communication with the People’s Defence Force across the country — is too dangerous for them as they could be charged under penal code 17(a) for contacting unlawful associations. Moreover, they are prone to being accused by both sides of being traitors, i.e. by both the army and the resistance movements, when their neutral view is seen by the viewers as disagreeable. Under these circumstances, there is no institution left for the journalists that can defend their rights against all odds. The absence of institutions that can defend the rights of journalists is not a very new trend as the whole last decade missed the opportunity to nurture media regulatory bodies that could safeguard the 29 “The Global New Light of Myanmar”, Ministry of Information, 4 November 2021, available at https://www.gnlm.com.mm/4-november-2021/, p. 16. 30 This was conveyed to me in personal communications with a regular columnist from leading Myanmar newspapers, and who is now under arrest. See also “ ”, Democratic Voice of Burma, 15 October 2021, available at http:// burmese.dvb.no/archives/494036. 31 The Burma Monitor was established in 2017 as a hate-speech monitoring group. Now the group, which comprises media experts and researchers, gives a monthly Burmese-language report to a civil society network working across Myanmar as well as to donor agencies that are funding Myanmar independent media. It also publishes occasional reports and give presentations to civil society in response to emergency needs in the media sector. 32 “Changes of media since the coup”, Burma Monitor, October 2021, pp. 3–20. 33 Ibid. 34 B. Lintner, “Neither Sanctions Nor Engagement Will Influence Myanmar’s Military”, The Irrawaddy, 20 August 2021, available at https://www.irrawaddy.com/opinion/guest-column/neither-sanctions-nor-engagement-will-influence-myanmars-military.html. 11