Everyone love to proud for truth. And journalists do too. Whenever I heard about truth, I always thinks about the type of is truth. Is it Subjective truth or Objective truth? Everyone has their own perspective, descendant, background education and values. So, the truth everyone accepts will diverse from their own perspective. Sometimes it give hard times to people when they don’t know which one to choose between subjective truth and objective truth, especially when they have to choose among the values they love. And they don’t know which side they have to stand.
In my own experience, Myanmar has been suffered under the military junta. People had no chance to access the basic human rights such as freedom of movement, freedom of speech, right to access the information, freedom of education, etc. These days, Myanmar society and Myanmar media worked hard for the human rights and published the issues of human right violations. Human right and getting democracy was the objective truth for Myanmar society.
After 2010, Myanmar has been started transition from military junta to democracy system and still in the transitional process. In this transitional process to democracy, there is conflict between Islamic community and Buddhist community. There were people dead, lost the houses on both sides. As the result, thousands of Rohingya were had to flee the country and now living in Bangladesh. Government authorities could not protect them. Islamic community and Rohingya community were suffered more than what Myanmar people suffered before 2010. There is no single human rights for Rohingya people.
In terms of human right violation, what Myanmar people suffered before 2010 and what Islamic community and Rohingya community suffering after 2010 is the same. But the truth what Myanmar people accept are different. Before 2010, they accept that gaining the access to human right is objective truth. But most of Myanmar people do not want to accept the access to human right for Islamic community and Rohingya community. It shows that Objective truth is changing based on their own value even for the same situation and concept. Sometimes they stand on the side of objective truth and sometimes on the side of subjective truth.
Most of the Myanmar journalists are the same. They used to accept the access to human right as objective truth. But they neglect violation of the human right of specific community which they think there is different value with them. It’s because of subjective truth. So, I believe if the one is value to ethic and professional attitude, their sense of objectivity will still be strong. If not, they will be still shifting between objective truth and subjective truth.
— Kyaw Soe —
A journalist based in Myanmar.
Student of Diploma in Visual Journalism — The Asian Center for Journalism at the Ateneo de Manila University
