On a typical day, Mai Rupa travels his hometown of Shan Province in eastern Myanmar and records the effects of the war.
Video journalists with online news outlet Shwe Phee Myay travel to remote towns and villages to collect and interview footage of stories ranging from battle updates to the situation of local civilians living in war zones.
His work is full of risk. The roads are littered with mines, and he can sometimes hide from air bombings and artillery fire.
“I have seen countless people injured and civilians dying in front of me,” Mai Rupa said.
“These heartbreaking experiences have had a deep impact on me,” he told Al Jazeera.
My Rupa is one of the few brave and independent journalists still reporting on Myanmar’s earth, where the 2021 military coup shattered the vulnerable transition to democracy and eliminated media freedom.
Like Shwe Phee Myay’s colleagues – a name referring to the rich history of tea cultivation in Shan State – Mai Rupa prefers to go by pen name because of the risk that one of the last remaining independent media publicly identifies as a reporter still active in the country.
Most journalists fled Myanmar in the aftermath of the military takeover and the growing civil war. Some continue to provide compensation by traveling across borders from nearby working bases in Thailand and India.
But staff at Shwe Fee Maie, a Burmese outlet with roots in the Tan community of Shan Province, continues to report from the ground, covering areas of Myanmar that have been fighting the military for decades and sometimes clashing with each other.
We are fighting to provide information to the public
After Myanmar’s military launched a coup in February 2021, journalists at Shwe Phee Myay faced new risks.
That March, two reporters with outlets fled arrests slightly, covering democratic protests. The entire team was already in hiding when soldiers and police attacked the office in the capital of Shan Province, Rashio two months later.
That September, the military arrested Lway M Phuong, the organisation’s video reporter, on suspicion of instigating and spreading “false news.” She served in prison for nearly two years. The remaining 10 Shwe Phee Myay teams were scattered after her arrest.
The news team, which spread across northern Shan State, east of the country, initially struggled to continue working. They chose to avoid urban areas where they might encounter the army. Every day I had a hard time continuing to report.
“We weren’t able to travel the main roads, only the backroad,” said Hlar Nyiem, assistant editor at Shwe Phee Myay.
“Sometimes we lose 4-5 working days a week,” she said.
Despite the dangers, the reporter for Shwe Phee Myay continued his secret work to provide information to the public.
When a magnitude 7.7 earthquake struck Central Myanmar on March 28th, killing more than 3,800 people, Schwe Fee Maie’s journalists were a handful of journalists who could document the aftermath from the country.
The military has blocked most international media from accessing earthquake-affected areas, citing difficulties in travel and accommodation, and local reporters secretly working in the country took a great risk to get information from the outside world.
“These journalists will continue to uncover the truth and keep people eager to see the military regime silence,” said Tu Tou Aung, a public policy scholar at Oxford University who has researched the landscape of Myanmar’s coupe media.
In addition to the civil war and threat posed by Myanmar’s military regime, Myanmar journalists have encountered new threats.
In January, US President Donald Trump and his billionaire best friend Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) began demolition of the US Agency for International Development (USAID).
According to reporters for the Journalism Advocacy Group, USAID had allocated more than $268 million to support the free flow of information in more than 30 independent media and over 30 countries around the world, from Ukraine to Myanmar.
In February, the Guardian reported on the USAID fund freeze, creating an “existential crisis” for exiled Myanmar journalists operating from the town of Maysot on the border with Thailand.
Things got worse in mid-March when the White House declared plans for the US Agency (USAGM) to minimize cuts. USAGM oversaw American Voice and Radio Free Asia, among other things, both of which were the leading providers of Myanmar news.
Last week, the RFA announced it would fire 90% of its staff and suspend it to create news in Tibet, Burma, Uyghur and Laos languages. VOA is facing a similar situation.
Tin Tin Ting NYO, managing director of Burma News International, a network of 16 local independent media organizations based in and outside Myanmar, said the loss of Burmese services provided by VOA and RFA has created a “vacuum of problematic information”.
Myanmar’s independent media sector was heavily dependent on the already declining international support, Ting Ting Nyo said.
Many local Myanmar news outlets have already “struggling to continue creating credible information,” she said, as a result of the USAID fundraising brought by Trump and executed by the Doge of Musk.
Some people fired staff, reduced programming or stopped it.
“Depending on the miniaturization of independent media has reduced surveillance capabilities [false] It provides narratives, early warnings and counterpropaganda, and ultimately undermines the democratic movement,” Tin Tin Nyo said.
“If independent media cannot produce news, policymakers around the world will not be aware of the actual situation in Myanmar,” she added.
“The constant fear of arrest and death”
According to the Committee to Protect Journalists, 35 journalists are currently remaining in jail in Myanmar, becoming the third most astounding jail guard in the world of journalists, after China and Israel.
The country ranks 169th out of 180 reporters without a border global press freedom index.
“Geornaists on earth must work under the constant fear of arrests and death,” Tin Tin Nyo said.
“The junta treats media and journalists as criminals, and targets them in particular to silence access to information.”
Despite the dangers, Shwe Phee Myay continues to publish news about events in Myanmar.
Facebook has 1 million followers – a digital platform where most people in Myanmar get news – Shwe Phee Myay’s reporting has become even more important since the 2021 military coup and the growing civil war.
Founded in Rashio in 2019, Schwe Fee Maie was one of dozens of independent media that emerged in Myanmar during a decade-long political opening that began with the emergence of half a century of relative international isolation under prestigious military rules in 2011.
Pre-published censorship ended in 2012 amid wider policy reforms as the military agreed to allow greater political freedom. Journalists who had worked in exile for media such as Burma’s Democratic Voice, Irrawaddy and Mizzima News began to carefully return home.
However, the country’s newborn press freedom was tense during its term of office in Aung San Suu Kai’s National Federation of Democratic Governments, which came to power in 2016 as a result of political reforms in the military.
The government of Aung San Suu Kyi has jailed journalists and blocked access to independent media to politically sensitive areas, including Rakhine State. There, the military committed a brutal campaign of ethnic cleansing against the Rohingya community and is now facing international accusations of genocide.
However, the situation for independent journalists has deteriorated dramatically after the 2021 coup. As the military cracked down on peaceful protests against the generals, it restricted the internet, revoked media licenses and arrested dozens of journalists. The violence sparked an armed uprising throughout Myanmar.
“If you stop, who will continue to address these issues?”
Shwe Phee Myay temporarily considered moving to Thailand as the situation worsened after the coup, but those running the news site decided to stay in the country.
“Our will was to stay in our own land,” said My Now Dan, who until recently served as editor of Bulma-to-English translations.
“Our perspective was that we needed to be here to gather news and collect footage.”
Their job then took on a new strength in October 2023. At that time, a national military alliance launched a surprising attack on military pre-post bases in Shan Province, near the border with China.
The attack marked a major escalation in the conflict in Myanmar. As a result, the troops that lost their vital territory retaliated with airstrikes, cluster ammunition and artillery fire. Within two months, more than half a million people had been evacuated to the battle.
Shwe Phee Myay was set up on its own to cover the crisis as there are few external journalists with access to the northern Shan province.
Then in January this year, Shwe Phee Myay received a notification that the USAID fund, which was approved in November, is no longer here, and has since expanded its cutting field reports, cancelling training and producing video news.
“We risk reporting that people are affected by the war, but our efforts seem unrecognised,” Editor-in-Chief Mai Lukau said.
“We have a strong talent base on the ground, but we face major challenges in securing the funds to continue our work.”
During staff meetings, My Lukau increased the likelihood of closing Shwe Fee Maiy with her colleagues.
Their response, he said, was to continue, even if the money was dry.
“We always ask ourselves, who will continue to deal with these issues when we stop?” he said.
“That question keeps us moving forward.”
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