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Agence France-Presse

The BBC’s Burmese language service on Monday said it was pulling a broadcasting deal with a popular Myanmar television channel citing “censorship”, with insiders saying the partners had clashed over coverage of the Muslim Rohingya minority.
The announcement is the latest blow to struggling press freedoms in the country and a remarkable turnaround for a news organisation that famously kept Myanmar’s de facto leader Aung San Suu Kyi up to date during her long years of house arrest under junta rule.
Since April 2014, BBC Burmese broadcast a daily news programme on MNTV with 3.7 million daily viewers.
On Monday the BBC said it was ending the deal after MNTV censored or pulled several programmes since March this year.
“The BBC cannot accept interference or censorship of BBC programmes by joint-venture television broadcasters as that violates the trust between the BBC and its audience,” a report the BBC’s Burmese website said.

The BBC statement did not detail what content was censored and MNTV did not respond to requests for comment.
But an official at the local channel said they objected to the BBC’s use of the word “Rohingya” in their reports.
“That’s why we cannot broadcast their service,” the employee said, asking not to be named.
The Rohingya are a stateless Muslim minority in Myanmar’s western Rakhine who face severe state-sanctioned persecution and have fled in droves in recent years.
Most international media call them Rohingya because the community has long identified itself that way.

But Myanmar’s government – and most local media – call them Bengalis, portraying them as illegal immigrants from Bangladesh despite many living in the country for generations.
Hopes had been high that the new government of Suu Kyi would usher in an era of free speech when they took power last year after half a century of military rule.
Suu Kyi was confined for years to a lakeside Yangon house under the junta but used to listen to the World Service and its Burmese language offshoot on her radio.
Yet since coming to power in landslide elections, her civilian-led government has frequently clashed with the media over their coverage.
Defamation prosecutions have also soared, increasingly targeting social media satirists, activists and journalists.
A major bone of contention with foreign media is coverage of Rakhine state, which has been under an army crackdown since a small group of Rohingya militants attacked police border posts last October.


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Rohingya Muslims

BBC pulls out of Myanmar TV deal over Rohingya ‘censorship’

Broadcasting House in London. Photo: Reuters

Myanmar pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi sits in a studio during her visit to the BBC World Service in London June 19, 2012. Myanmar's Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi on Tuesday began an emotional visit to Britain, where she left her family 24 years ago and took up her famous struggle against the military dictatorship in her homeland. REUTERS/Jeff Overs/Handout (BRITAIN - Tags: MEDIA SOCIETY POLITICS) NO COMMERCIAL OR BOOK SALES. NO SALES. FOR EDITORIAL USE ONLY. NOT FOR SALE FOR MARKETING OR ADVERTISING CAMPAIGNS. NO THIRD PARTY SALES. NOT FOR USE BY REUTERS THIRD PARTY DISTRIBUTORS. THIS IMAGE HAS BEEN SUPPLIED BY A THIRD PARTY. IT IS DISTRIBUTED, EXACTLY AS RECEIVED BY REUTERS, AS A SERVICE TO CLIENTS

In this Friday, Sept. 1, 2017, file photo, members of Myanmar's Rohingya ethnic minority walk through rice fields after crossing the border into Bangladesh near Cox's Bazar's Teknaf area. Myanmar's military says hundreds have died in recent violence in the western state of Rakhine triggered by attacks on security forces by insurgents from the Rohingya. Advocates for the Rohingya, an oppressed Muslim minority in overwhelmingly Buddhist Myanmar, say hundreds of Rohingya civilians have been killed by security forces. Thousands have fled into neighboring Bangladesh. (AP Photo/Bernat Armangue, File)

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