Although there have been some reforms in the past year, Burma still has an authoritarian government led by members of the former military regime now recycled as civilian parliamentarians. Around 500 political prisoners are still held the country’s 42 prisons.

On 28 May 2012, Ma Thida Htwe, a 27-year-old Burmese woman, was raped and killed by a group of men in the town of Kyaukphyu in the western state of Arakan. By focusing attention on the (Rakhine and Rohingya) ethnic origins of the rape victim and alleged culprits, the media exacerbated ethnic tensions, which led to the lynching of 10 Rohingyas five days later.

The incident triggered an outbreak of violence. Clashes and vandalism spread throughout the state. President Thein Sein declared a state of emergency in Arakan on 10 June, authorizing troops to take effective control of the region and restore law and order, by force if necessary. The media coverage of the communal violence, as well as the steps taken by the government in response to the way the events have been reported, represent new threats to freedom of news and information in Burma.

A malicious online smear campaign was launched against the Democratic Voice of Burma, already targeted by demonstrators protesting about foreign coverage of the violence. After publishing several articles on its website and on the Facebook pages of its journalists, the organization received numerous abusive messages by email and in comments on Facebook, including some that were threatening. It was forced to remove many of the comments as a result. On 9 June, the DVB website amongst others was the target of a Distributed Denial-of-Service Attack (DDoS) by hackers.

Finally, an analysis of the origin of the IP addresses used in the DDoS attack on the DVB site on 9 June showed that at least 75 of them were in Russia or Singapore. In Russia, the attackers were reportedly located in universities in Moscow, Saint Petersburg and Kaluga, all of which have Burmese students (mostly officers from the Burma's military) studying information technology or nuclear engineering. This concerted attack is unlikely to have been a spontaneous response by Burmese Internet users to DVB’s coverage.

2012.06.28 Reporters without borders -Arakan and New Threats to Freedom of News