Myanmar Media Historically and the Challenges of Transition 15 states (Kipgen 2017). The military has been at war with dozens of groups from the ethnic states ever since, and attempts to broker peace over the decades have mostly failed. Aung San Suu Kyi’s current leadership in the peace negotiations has been much criticized, and yet the military largely controls the process, which has excluded many of the key players from the ethnic states (Horsey 2017; Min Aung Htoo Nai 2017). The Alliance for Gender Inclusion in the Peace Process (AGIPP) has also pointed to the absence of women in the peace negotiations, reflecting a wider problem of gender inequality and discrimination in the society (AGIPP 2017). Thin Lei Win’s chapter in this volume speaks to this exclusion in the media context. Even though Myanmar is linguistically diverse, this diversity was suppressed for decades under military rule in favour of the Burmese language. As such, information about the seven states and other self-administered areas named after ethnic minorities had in the past tended to be scarce, with the exception of efforts by individuals and communities that managed to produce reports, documentaries and interviews with journalists outside the country. This means that younger generations of ethnic minorities have for the most part been deprived of education and training in their own languages, although some have been educated in rural schools run by ethnic armed groups and therefore have a stronger grasp of their mother tongues, both oral and written. Ethnic nationality communities have nonetheless promoted their languages through their own media, from ‘rebel broadcasts’ in the 1970s and 1980s to news and religious media today (Lintner 2001, p. 29).6 Many of these developments stem from patterns established under colonial rule. The British Colonial Period (1824–1948) and Post-independence Civilian Rule (1948–62) Education and literacy have always been highly valued in Burma and a source of national pride (Lintner 2001). Newspapers were first published in Burma during British colonial rule, beginning with the Englishlanguage newspaper The Maulmain Chronicle, founded in 1836 and published by the British administration as a means of communicating with British forces. This was followed by other papers produced by the British administration, Baptist missions and other English merchants 01 ch1-MyanmarMediaIT-5P.indd 15 8/4/19 10:29 am