Bertil Lintner and Andrew Marshall – who have penned, between them, some of the more interesting books on modern Burma - have both come to the (renewed) attention of the Burmese authorities in recent days. The Irrawaddy has the details.
On the topic of journalistic access to Burma, I noticed in this Saturday’s The Guardian that Cathy Scott-Clark and Adrian Levy have an excellent article on Than Shwe. They appear to have been in the country in the period immediately before the cyclone. And this after their comments about Burma, and its rulers, in 2001’s The Stone of Heaven: Unearthing the Secret History of Imperial Green Jade.
Some others also seem to be getting visas for Burma, even after the long-term (pre-cyclone) clampdown discussed here. Where there is a will there is often (it seems) a way…unless you are Bertil Lintner.
Lintner was, of course, the target of much government attention back in the 1980s when the world looked to people like him for expert analysis of the prospects for democratic change in Burma.
There is a book produced back in 1989 by the News and Periodicals Enterprise, Ministry of Information, Government of the Union of Myanmar, called The conspiracy of treasonous minions within the Myanmar Naing-Ngan and traitorous cohorts abroad that we have here in the library in Oxford. On page 283 there is a picture of Lintner copied (no doubt without permission) from his Land of Jade. The caption is: “Correspondent Bertil Lintner who has been procuring misinformation about the Myanmar Naing-Ngan from insurgent sources to write all kinds of false news seen on the left with BCP [Burma Communist Party] chairman Ba Thein Tin in the centre”.
Ahhh, misinformation: pot…kettle…black.
2 responses so far ↓
1 Ashley // May 27, 2008 at 1:16 am
Bertil was so rightly proud of the following glorious review of ‘Outrage’ [White Lotus 1990] from the ‘Working People’s Daily’ [since re-named 'New Light of Myanmar'], that he reproduced it below the blurb on the back-cover of his book: “… a pot-pourri of maliciously selected misrepresentations, misinterpretaqtions, fabrications, and rumour-sourced disinformation … by past master of malice, foreign journalist Bertil Lintner.” … pot … kettle … black – indeed !
2 aiontay // May 27, 2008 at 9:50 am
This must have been one of those rare instances where the writer was helped by a bad review. Imagine what it would have been like if the regime had responded positively to his work.
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