Each month Su Myat secretly crosses the border from Thailand into Myanmar to report on her conflict-ridden homeland, covering military airstrikes and illegal scam compounds that have become a haven for organised, transnational crime.
The editor of the online news outlet ThanLwinKhet News, Su is part of a community of exiled journalists from Myanmar whose organisations are facing an existential crisis due to US president Donald Trump’s decision to freeze foreign aid.
“The horrible USAid, the horrible things that they’re spending money on,” Trump said of his shock move to freeze funds to the United States Agency for Development. “It’s got to be kickbacks.”
But in Mae Sot, a western border town in Thailand known as a trading hub and hidden market for gems, drugs and human trafficking – and also home to about 300 exiled journalists from Myanmar – USAid money is spent supporting independent journalism. Trump’s decision has plunged editors and reporters there into new depths of uncertainty and fear.
Many of the journalists in exile take tremendous risks on both sides of the border. On one side, documenting atrocities committed by the military junta, which violently seized power in a February 2021 coup; on the other, living with the constant threat of detention and arrest, given that many live in Thailand without proper documentation.
Now, financial stress and job cuts have been added to the list of occupational hazards.
“We can say we have nothing now,” Su said. “As soon as I wake up, I have to think about money.”
Operating on a shoestring budget that was entirely reliant on USAid funding, Su works with a network of journalists in Mae Sot and a small cohort of citizen journalists inside Myanmar that she has trained to covertly file.
A journalist of 20 years, Su, who has the documentation needed to live in Thailand, is now using her own funds to pay the salaries of her team – albeit at 50% – and providing them with a small home and cheap meals.
“They don’t have money, they don’t have magic,” she said, “But they have decided to help each other, like providing some rice or oil for their daily needs.”
Among his whirlwind of foreign policy decisions, Trump has suspended billions of dollars in projects backed by USAid, including more than $268m in independent media support.
A USAid factsheet, accessed by the press freedom campaign group Reporters Without Borders (RSF) before being taken offline, showed that in 2023 the US agency funded training and support for 6,200 journalists, assisted 707 non-state news outlets and supported 279 civil-society organisations dedicated to strengthening independent media in more than 30 countries, from Iran to Russia and Myanmar.
‘Like a dark night’
Myanmar’s independent press council estimates about 200 journalists in exile have faced “sudden impact” from Trump’s decision.
“Some of my colleagues are still reporting, even though they know they won’t receive payment,” said Harry, 29, a journalist who asked to be identified only by his nickname for safety reasons.
Harry, another Mae Sot journalist-in-exile, was among 20 reporters that was told by their regional news organisation that they would not be paid this January, although that hasn’t stopped him from working.
“Burma is a living hell right now, but nobody seems to care,” he said. “So we have to keep reporting about it.”
Since the 2021 coup, Myanmar’s military junta has killed more than 6,000 people, arbitrarily detained more than 20,000 and led to the internal displacement of 3.5 million people, according to Amnesty International.
The military has carried out widespread and systematic attacks against the civilian population nationwide, bombing schools, hospitals, and religious buildings with total impunity, Amnesty says.
For journalists like Harry, returning home means facing inevitable conscription into the junta army – the violations of which he has been working to expose.
Yoon, 27, who was inspired to became a journalist after the military seized power, works for a different media outlet, but she doesn’t know for how long. When her company broke the news of the funding cuts, she said everyone fell silent.
“It was like a dark night. No one was talking … The speaker froze too,” she said, “For this month, February, the company will give me my salary … but that’s not stable.”
Media organisations have warned the funding freeze will be a blessing for autocratic governments, particularly in countries such as Myanmar that lack independent media without it.
“Whatever the decision made in the White House, I think the regime and its associates are gleefully happy to have heard this news,” said Aung Zaw, founder and editor-in-chief of the Irrawaddy, a news website founded in 1990.
US funding, via Internews, a media non-profit that works in more than 100 countries, had accounted for about 35% of the Irrawaddy’s budget.
“The regime is so afraid of us because they know that information is very powerful and their propaganda machine doesn’t work,” he said, describing the impact of the cuts as “huge”.
The Irrawaddy, like all the others, is now drawing up a contingency plan. “There are a lot of sad decisions I have to make”, Zaw said.
A chilling effect
Across the region, Myanmar’s media has been the hardest hit – but it is not alone. In Cambodia, a country that has all but shuttered a free and independent press in recent years, several organisations are also scrambling to fund their future.
Chan Thul, a Cambodian journalist and co-founder of media startup Kiripost which was relying on a USAid grant to fund half of its operations, said at first they thought Trump might change his mind.
“But as the days pass by, we have heard the news again and again. So we are kind of becoming more hopeless every day,” he said, adding they will find a way to survive.
In Indonesia, Wahyu Dhyatmika, an investigative journalist and head of digital at Tempo, says the cuts will have a “chilling effect” across south-east Asia.
“This is also unfortunate because in the region we see a growing trend to authoritarianism. So we see the need for stronger media, stronger journalism, and we need all the support we can get.”
Back in Mae Sot, Su says despite the risks, she feels compelled to keep reporting what is happening on the ground in Myanmar.
“If we stay in Thailand we cannot have sympathy or empathy for them,” she says, “We have to go to see their real situation … That’s why we write.”
English (US)