4/5/22, 3:23 PM Hate speech, atrocities and fake news: the crisis in Myanmar | Financial Times We are still in the process of transition . . . We have to build democratic institutions Trying to elicit a more robust response Pe Myint, Information minister journalism? “You are an experienced from the minister, I asked: did Pe Myint remember Wa Lone? He described him as a “young, active man”. Would the two get a fair trial? “I believe so,” he said. Was Myanmar a safe place to practise reporter . . . you will know that this is relatively safer than most of the other places around the world.” I brought up the jailed reporters again. “We are still in the process of transition and we have to build democratic institutions,” he repeated. “We have to review existing laws and practices.” Meanwhile, Myanmar’s estrangement from the west is growing. At the end of January, Bill Richardson, a former US cabinet member who advocated for the democracy movement when Aung San Suu Kyi was under house arrest, created a stir when he quit her advisory group on Rakhine, which he described as a “whitewash”. (He also said she was “furious” when he brought up the case of the two jailed reporters.) The Irrawaddy, for its part, told me it was determined to pursue its editorial line — with or without donors. “We really appreciate their commitment and contribution to independent media,” Kyaw Zwa Moe said. “But if they don’t want to continue, that is their position, their choice. We won’t change anything we are doing.” The Open Society Foundations made a decision a few years ago to wrap up its funding at the end of 2018, although it told me the decision was unrelated to content. The National Endowment for Democracy remains a donor. The publication recently moved its offices to a new building owned by a prominent company, causing speculation it has secured a new private sponsor. The Irrawaddy now has two reporters in Bangladesh, Kyaw Zwa Moe told me. It has also dialled back its use of “self-identifying” before the word Rohingya. The qualifier, Kyaw Zwa Moe said, was “just a temporary use”, and the publication had reintroduced Rohingya “when people’s feelings calmed down a bit”. In future, it would use both as it saw fit. This recalibration is one of many now going on among journalists covering Myanmar, a country whose story has become that much harder — and that much more important — to tell to the world. John Reed is the FT’s south-east Asia correspondent Artwork by Mike McQuade Photographs: Reuters; Getty Images; Thet Htoo; Xinhua/Alamy https://www.ft.com/content/2003d54e-169a-11e8-9376-4a6390addb44 18/19