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Deutsche Welle in Myanmar

Patrick Leusch (ah)September 28, 2007

Two Deutsche Welle journalists left Myanmar, also known as Burma, shortly before the events in the former capital Yangon (also known as Rangoon) escalated and culminated in the army's brutal crackdown on the protestors. Adelheid Feilcke-Tiemann and Thorsten Karg were participating in a project for broadcast journalists, aimed at exploring independent reporting in the dictatorship. The events put an abrupt end to the project.

https://p.dw.com/p/LsSj
Two DW journalists left Myanmar before the crackdown got underway
Two DW journalists left Myanmar before the crackdown got underwayImage: AP

"In Rangoon, things were bubbling beneath the surface for days," said Adelheid Feilcke Tiemann, who works for Deutsche Welle's training academy. "We drove through the streets of Rangoon and could see people getting ready for the protests. The whole city centre was restless. Later, everything was closed off."

Thorsten Karg, the DW project manager, said that the state radio, the country's only radio, had not reported on the demonstrations at first, likening the station to a kind of parallel universe.

"The ministry of information decrees all the reports which have to be read out, right down to the smallest detail. To begin with, the demonstrations were not mentioned on the radio at all. Only later, when it was no longer possible to conceal anything, reports about the protests slowly emerged. The protestors were, of course, labelled as agitators, bad monks and counter-revolutionary forces."

New ideas and values

Karg and Feilcke-Tiemann were in Yangon for one week as part of a first-time Deutsche Welle Academy project to train broadcast journalists in Myanmar. For years, Deutsche Welle has been promoting this project with a renowned Asian institute. But in a country such as Myanmar, with its notorious regime, the project has been precarious -- but all the more worthy.

The project is funded by the German Federal Ministry for Economic Co-operation and Development. Thorsten Karg explained how two weeks of intensive co-operation introduced the Burmese trainees to new ideas, values and outlooks, which they had little chance of coming across in their everyday lives.

When the situation in Myanmar deteriorated on Wednesday, Deutsche Welle decided to cut short the project, and the two journalists flew back to Germany. But their Burmese colleagues stayed behind. Adelheid Feilcke-Tiemann said they were very worried because "no one knew what was to come."

No-one can ignore the protests in Myanmar today, whether there or abroad, as opposed to 1988 when the uprising was so brutally suppressed by the regime.

Karg said the fact that the whole world had noticed the protests and had been reporting on them had brought a lot of courage to the people in Myanmar.

An impoverished nation

The protests were originally triggered by the government's decision to massively increase fuel prices. Adelheid Feilcke-Tiemann said that the poverty in which the nation had had to live in, had compelled people onto the streets.

"One can see poverty even in Yangon," she explained. "The people have old bicycles and old cars. There are hardly any mobile phones. People wear simple clothes and their teeth are bad. The entire population is impoverished."