The Myanmar Times

The Myanmar Times (Burmese: မြန်မာတိုင်း(မ်), MLCTS: mran ma: tuing: [mjànmá táɪn]), founded in 2000, is the oldest privately owned and operated English-language newspaper in Myanmar. A division of Myanmar Consolidated Media Co., Ltd. (MCM), The Myanmar Times published weekly English and Burmese-language news journals until March 2015, when the English edition began publishing daily, five days per week. Its head offices are in Yangon, with additional offices in Mandalay and Nay Pyi Taw. As per an announcement at the official website of the newspaper, it stopped nine media services on 21 February 2021 (20 days after the 2021 Myanmar coup d'état) primarily for three months. However, its services are still suspended till now.

The Myanmar Times was founded by Ross Dunkley, an Australian, and Sonny Swe (Myat Swe) of Myanmar in 2000, making it the only Burmese newspaper to have foreign investment at the time. The newspaper is privately owned by Myanmar Consolidated Media Co. Ltd. (MCM), which is 51 per cent locally owned and 49 per cent foreign owned. In the past, The Myanmar Times had often been perceived as being close to the government in part because Sonny Swe's father, Brigadier General Thein Swe, was a senior member of the now-disbanded Military Intelligence department.

When it was first established, The Myanmar Times was the only publication in the country to be censored by Military Intelligence, rather than the Press Scrutiny Board. This created some resentment locally, among both the Ministry of Information and other journals. Internationally, the paper had been derided as "sophisticated propaganda" and a public relations tool for more progressive elements in the government, such as General Khin Nyunt, Myanmar's former Prime Minister. It was also forced to print government propaganda, albeit under a "State Opinion" banner.

Sonny Swe was arrested on 26 November 2004. In April 2005 he was given a 14-year jail sentence for publishing the papers without approval from the Ministry of Information's Press Scrutiny Board. The charges were imposed retroactively after Military Intelligence was declared an illegal organisation, which in turn meant The Myanmar Times had been effectively publishing uncensored material since its launch. He was released from Taunggyi Prison in Shan State on 23 April 2013 after serving more than eight years of a 14-year sentence.

Swe's arrest and sentencing were generally considered political and linked to his father's senior position in Military Intelligence, a government body that was purged in 2004 after a power struggle within the military. Following Sonny Swe's arrest, his stake in The Myanmar Times was transferred to his wife, Yamin Htin Aung, who continued to hold the local share with another investor, Pyone Maung Maung, for almost a year.

However, she was forced by the Ministry of Information to sell her stake to another local media entrepreneur, Tin Tun Oo, whose company, Thuta Swe Sone, publishes four other journals. Tin Tun Oo was the secretary of the Myanmar Writers and Journalists' Association and was believed at the time to have a close relationship with the Ministry of Information. When Myanmar Consolidated Media's shareholders initially refused to comply with the ministry, rumours circulated that the paper would be shut down. Australia's Foreign Minister Alexander Downer reportedly flew to Yangon to intervene, although his office denied this.

At the time, the newspaper was still widely regarded as semi-official or government-influenced, it being run by a private company. When, on 17 January 2011, the state-owned paper The Mirror implied that Tin Tun Oo had taken over as editor-in-chief of MCM, fueling rumours of a power struggle between Ross Dunkley and Tin Tun Oo, it received a formal complaint from the media group. Following Sonny Swe's imprisonment in 2005, another Burmese media entrepreneur, Tin Tun Oo, acquired the locally owned share of MCM in controversial circumstances.

The reformist Thein Sein government abolished pre-publication censorship in August 2012. Until then, all media in Myanmar including The Myanmar Times was heavily censored by the Ministry of Information's Press Scrutiny and Registration Division, commonly known as the Press Scrutiny Board. According to Dunkley, on average, 20 per cent of the articles submitted to the censorship board were rejected, and the gaps filled were with soft news stories.