4/5/22, 3:23 PM Hate speech, atrocities and fake news: the crisis in Myanmar | Financial Times Kyaw Zwa Moe, the English-language editor of The Irrawaddy and the brother of its founder, Aung Zaw, in the publication’s Yangon office, June 2016 The problem, he said, “is that the international community sees our coverage differently: we are trying to portray the real situation of Myanmar, and also the very complex situation of Rakhine in this issue”. This remark echoed similar ones made by Aung San Suu Kyi and other officials, who accuse foreigners of dwelling on the Rohingya crisis at the expense of the many other problems plaguing Myanmar — economic deprivation, the balance of power between the government and the military, and armed conflicts with other ethnic groups. Kyaw Zwa Moe was a teenager in 1988, when anger against the regime swept into mass street protests. While Aung Zaw took part in demonstrations, Kyaw Zwa Moe was an activist at his high school. As the protests gathered strength, the regime responded with force. Aung Zaw was arrested and spent a brief time in prison before fleeing to Thailand. Kyaw Zwa Moe stayed on in Myanmar, publishing a clandestine political journal with his friends, but fell into the authorities’ net after Aung San Suu Kyi received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1991 and the military rounded up activists. He was tortured, with beatings and sleep deprivation, during what he calls “10 days in hell” at two interrogation centres, before being sentenced to 10 years in prison. Over in Thailand, his brother was starting up The Irrawaddy, then a print publication, with the aim of reporting on a country under censorship and military rule. Aung Zaw built up a team of reporters who worked the phones and debriefed travellers at the Thai border. “The world was thirsty for information, and that’s why Aung Zaw founded it — and why we published in English first,” Kyaw Zwa Moe told me. The Irrawaddy launched its ­English-language website in 2000 and its Burmese one in 2001. https://www.ft.com/content/2003d54e-169a-11e8-9376-4a6390addb44 10/19