see url:
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/09/podcasts/the-daily-newsletter-myanmar-coup-protests.html
see full report...Interesting article, I thought...
Quote>>>
Being a foreign correspondent is usually an exercise in being there —
unless you’re trying to cover a coup in Myanmar during a pandemic. Even
before the putsch, the country was almost entirely closed because of the
coronavirus. And now that the country has returned to full military
rule, those of us who used to fly in regularly for reporting trips to
Myanmar are realizing that visas won’t reappear once the virus wanes.
Luckily, we at The Times have a remarkable network of reporters and
photographers in Myanmar who are risking their lives to get the story
out. They report even as they are living with summary executions on the
street, daily internet blackouts, long lines to withdraw small amounts
of cash from A.T.M.s, the constant threat that security forces will
knock on their doors with an arrest warrant.
To be a reporter in Myanmar today, to be someone who documents the
military’s casual and cruel violence, is now a crime. Dozens of
journalists have been arrested. Others have been shot at. Despite this,
a brave corps of journalists is documenting the military’s slaughter —
at least 600 civilians have been killed since the coup — and telling the
stories of those who are standing up in protest. Their ranks are
supplemented by citizen reporters whose footage and photos are valuable
evidence of what is unfolding in Myanmar.
Meanwhile, those of us stuck outside the country have had to rely on
skills that we honed during the pandemic year as foreign correspondents
who don’t travel. That means a lot of video chats and talking with
sources on encrypted apps. It means asking someone to please pan their
phone camera to get a full view of the interior of their house because
it might provide a salient detail for a story. It means poring over
shaky videos of military brutality and crosschecking them with others
from different angles to ensure that the geotagging is accurate.
Even when Myanmar’s internet wasn’t strangled by the military regime, as
it has been since the coup, the country was awash in rumors. The wealth
of whispered stories shared with journalists was a result of the long
years of isolation imposed by the ruling junta. One of my favorite
activities in a Myanmar teahouse was to lean forward as someone would
spill the latest tea over actual tea.
Today, the rumor mill is spinning in overdrive. It takes time to confirm
things, and some of the more outlandish gossip turns out to be just
that. But in other cases, what seems like unimaginable cruelty turns out
to be real. Have the security forces killed more than 40 children, often
with a single bullet to the head? Yes, they have. Did they burn off a
tattoo on a man’s arm because it depicted the country’s ousted civilian
leader, Daw Aung San Suu Kyi? Yes, they did.
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