BURMA

We’re free to travel there, but in Burma, no one is free.

While our travel press may be freed to avoid publishing the truth about Burma, the media in Burma enjoys no such liberties. The regime's Press Scrutiny Board orders articles even obliquely critical of official actions to be deleted. Unlicensed possession of a fax machine or modem is punishable by 15 years in jail. There is no public internet access in Burma, apart from a handful of expensive email accounts that pass through a central military server where messages can be delayed for hours while they are read by censors.

Examples of censorship include:

• Banned topics include everything from deposed dictators such as Slobodan Milosevic and Suharto to floods, plane crashes and train wrecks.

• The September 11 attacks were not mentioned on state television and only in passing by government newspapers. Police confiscated contraband videotapes of CNN’s September 11 coverage and threatened vendors with arrest.

• When the national football team was knocked out of the Asian Tiger Cup in 2000, the newspapers were ordered not to report the results.

• A local film-critic’s review of The...

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