USDA Going to Press?

By WAI MOE

The Burmese military junta’s most loyal support group, the Union Solidarity and Development Association (USDA), is reportedly planning to start publishing a daily newspaper in the run-up to the 2010 Burmese elections, according to media sources in Rangoon.

Several journalists in Rangoon confirmed to The Irrawaddy on Wednesday that the USDA was contacting journalists and offering them work at a forthcoming newspaper. Reporters have been told that they would be paid a competitive salary—150,000 kyat (US $150) per month—at the new daily, which does not yet have a name.

According to the sources, USDA leaders are looking at office space in a building on Min Dhamma Road, near Myanmar Convention Center, in Rangoon.

Analysts say that a USDA newspaper could play a significant role in disseminating government propaganda, particularly during the election campaign period.

The USDA was prominent during the national referendum for a junta-backed constitution in May 2008. Similarly, the organization is likely to be trusted by the Naypyidaw regime again next year to convince and coerce the electorate to vote for pro-junta parties, said the analysts.

Since late last year, the USDA has reportedly “invited” respected persons in local communities around the country to run for pro-junta parties in the upcoming election.

Information Minister and executive member of the USDA, Brig-Gen Kyaw Hsan, is reputedly the mastermind of plans to crank up the military government’s propaganda machine prior to the election. He vowed at a meeting with journalists that he “will fight back against the media using media.”

Under Kyaw Hsan’s guidance, the Ministry of Information sponsored a journalism training course in early February in Rangoon. The 47 Burmese writers and journalists who attended the course were reportedly taught how journalists should cover the 2010 elections.

A pro-junta political journal, Northern Star, was recently launched by Thiha Aung, an ex-military officer and a former editor of the junta mouthpiece, Myanma Alin, which is the Burmese version of The New Light of Myanmar.

“Now, the government has already introduced the ‘seven-step roadmap to democracy,’” Thiha Aung was quoted as saying in a Rangoon-based journal, The Voice Weekly, in early February. “We will report that there is no alternative way to the ‘roadmap’ and encourage people to support this most appropriate way.”

The USDA is perhaps most notorious for the roles its members assumed in suppressing monk-led mass demonstrations in Burma in September 2007, as well as participating in a brutal ambush on pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi and her convoy in Depayin, Sagaing Division, in May 2003.