Writing for the Burmese regime’s two most popular daily newspapers The New Light of Myanmar and Myanma Alin on Sunday, pro-junta writer Ngar Min Swe claimed foreign news organizations and radio stations—including Burmese media abroad—are “more destructive than Nargis.”
The article continued: “Some foreign broadcasting stations are making attempts to undermine national unity under the pretext of Nargis. Such groundless news stories are designed to undermine the trust of donor countries and organizations in Burma and the Burmese people.”
The writer said that reports by foreign news agencies regarding corruption over international aid were wrong and that the foreign media intended to break the trust and create misunderstanding between international donors and the government.
“They have come to destroy the generosity of the donors and the organizations,” he said.
The article also accused a particular citizen of Burma of giving interviews to foreign radio stations saying that the interviewee was a “contributor” for the radio stations and had told lies about the military government.
The article went on to criticize one of the anonymous interviewee’s comments—that cyclone victims would have to eat dead bodies if they didn’t receive chocolate and biscuits from international donors.
However, the reporter applauded another writer, Hlaing Aung, who had suggested in an earlier article in state-run media that cyclone victims in the Irrawaddy delta and Rangoon Division could survive without international aid, such as chocolate bars, by consuming natural resources like vegetables, fish and frogs.
Ngar Min Swe said, “I’m a fish and prawn breeder, so I have some knowledge of fish and prawns. In Burma, the month of May is a period when female fish find suitable places for laying their eggs. This year, no one was in a position to catch pregnant fish. Even a spawning fish, prawn or crab can give birth to millions of [offspring]. Food is more plentiful for them in their pastures this year than previous years.”
The author is believed to be referring to human corpses and animal carcasses as “food” for the fish.
Ngar Min Swe also said Burmese people had achieved their constitutional referendum despite being attacked by foreign radio stations.
However, a local resident in Rangoon who was working with monks to help cyclone survivors dismissed the article. “We are the ones who are helping people and collecting information from them,” he said. “Therefore, we are more credible. As for the government—they usually write those kinds of reports.”
ႏိုင္ငံတကာအကူအညီ ကုမၸဏီမ်ား အျမတ္ထုတ္
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