Splice celebrates the transformation of media in Asia. This podcast features conversations with people across the global media ecosystem: media startup founders, tech, data and design folks, investors, journalists, media development funders and donors, product managers, and academics.
Hosted and produced by Rishad Patel and Alan Soon.
Hi, everyone. I'm December from Exile Hub. I'm a communication manager. Thank you for taking the interest in my session. And thanks, Alan, for inviting me. I don't know why, but thank you.
Okay, so the, there's no slides. I'm going to talk about what Myanmar Journalism Exile, what they need support with, and here's where you can do. Before we start with that, I just want to introduce our organization first.
My organization is called Exile Hub, and we started right after the coup. We were born right after the coup, and we started with sending in some funds for media professionals inside Myanmar. We began by sending press kits, VPNs, full SIM cards, and funds for detained journalists and family members of detained journalists inside. That's how we started in 2021, right after the coup.
Then we thought, okay, after a few months, we didn't become an organization. We just did all of the sending in money, press kits, everything through crowdfunding, and we got 85,000 USD something through crowdfunding. And we thought, okay, why don't we become an organization?
So a few months later, we thought, because there are so many journalists flying out of Myanmar to Thailand, they needed relocation at first, and they needed a place to continue their work, a place to stay, a safe space for them to stay. And we started in Bangkok in 2021, where they first started to come into Bangkok because there were no flights directly from Yangon to Chiang Mai.
So it was from Yangon to Bangkok, and we opened a hub, we call it a hub/safe space where the journalists can work, where they can, you know, stay safely. It was a tool from two weeks to three months maximum for them to stay at our hub. And that's where I want to show the hub and the video of our fellows. But yeah, I'll send it in Telegram.
So, and after 2021, we started to expand to Chiang Mai in 2022 with the safe space and the hub. And in 2023, we expanded this year, we expanded to Mae Sot with two safe spaces for a mixed gender safe space. And then there's only for women journalists safe house in Mae Sot, because the need is more in Mae Sot.
And Mae Sot is a border area between Thailand and Myanmar for those who are not familiar with the Myanmar-Thai context. So that's how we started. And that's how far we have come with the safe spaces and stuff like that. So, and what I'm going to say right now, how you can contribute and what you can do for media journalists in exile,
it's based on our experiences. It's based on what, you know, Exile Hub has gone through for the past two and a half years. What we do is we have three programming and there's three key aspects to that. And the first is psychosocial support.
You know, we believe in a holistic approach. First, we started with, you know, shelter, safe space, but you know, journalists, you're quite stubborn. I'm not a journalist myself, but you know, I can see that. You know, they're the frontliners, you know, they are taking this horrible, horrible news and nobody was taking care of their mental well-being. You know, and it's, it was still a stigma for people to, you know, even talk about their, their well-being. And so we started with psychosocial support and we gave, we provide individual counseling.
We provide emotional well-being workshops and there's a quite popular workshop among our community
within media professional workers and that's resilient workshop. We have had it for like 15, 16 resilient workshops now and they are mainly operated in Mae Sot because, you know, like I said, the need is more in Mae Sot. That's where it's more of a hostile environment in Mae Sot.
So, you know, we, we provide that and for those who are not interested in speaking of your feelings, express your feelings with the others, we provide personal safety workshops, border safety workshops
and digital safety workshops. So digital safety workshops are not what, what we in house are
doing. We connect with other organizations that, you know, provide digital safety. Again, we believe in, because physical safety is important, but it is as important as digital safety.
So we try to be holistic with our approach and the last thing is vocational training/personal growth because many of the, many of the media professionals living here, we have both, older generation senior journalists, but we also have those that, you know, just became media professionals after the coup. So, you know, we believe in providing ethical journalism or video editing. How do you do video editing? And the most popular one is podcast training.
We give podcast trainings and it has been four seasons so far with podcast trainings. I think Ko Jack and a few others, they're going to talk about the podcast training. And yeah, so those are the things that we do, but addition, addition to that, we do emergency support. It's, it's not in my JD. It's not in my colleague's JD, but we have, we often speak with our fellows. We call them our fellows, our communities. And, you know, many of them, they lack visa fees.
They don't, many of the media houses they work at, they don't provide visa fees. They don't provide medical insurance, health insurance. So these are things that they, you know, bring up and they don't have any legal support. So, you know, they come to us. We talk about this. And what we do is that, you know, in addition to the work that I mentioned, we try to write grant applications for them. We try to connect with other organizations that, you know, provide legal support, medical support to media professionals. So, and last year, we had focus group discussions with a few of the, a few, a few media houses and a few editors, chief editors. And, you know, we were asking, you know, what do you need? What do you, what is that you need, you know? And we have a research paper on that. And I think it's, we're releasing that soon. And based on that, whether their needs are mainly medical insurance and legal support in our border safe, border safety training, we try to include Thai lawyers that, you know, can speak about how to, how to blend in as a, as a Thai person in Mae Sot or how to dress up in Mae Sot to speak about the, because, you know, we had election in Thailand, you know, when to move, when not to move around, when to move around.
So, stuff like that we include in our training. So, actually, I have so much more and so much details, but my colleagues said, you know, stop right there. That's, you know, let, let the audience engage with you and ask questions. So, I'm going to stop right there. And if you have any questions, any comments, any discussions, go ahead.
Hi, you said you had a, my name's Hui. You said you had a safe house for women journalists in Mae Sot. Can you explain what are the special needs of the women journalists that you cater to? Like, why did you feel like a safe house was needed just for them in Mae Sot?
Let's go back to 2021 first. In 2021, you know, journalists were flying from Yangon to Bangkok and then to Chiang Mai directly now. We no longer have a housing hub in Bangkok anymore. We only have, we shut down in 2023 in Bangkok. And now we have more in Chiang Mai and in Mae Sot. The reason why they need more of the housing there is because in 2021, more of like high profile journalists, people who were at risk, they were flying out.
But now they cannot fly out anymore from there. And some of the journalists who have been to jail, who have been detained, you know, they cross the border from, what do you call it, from Myanmar to Mae Sot. And, and they don't, some of the media houses, they don't provide any places for these media women journalists. And from our findings, based on our experience, they face sexual harassment and, you know, verbal harassment at their workplaces or at their, where they stay together. So that's why we, you know, try to prioritize women journalists in Mae Sot because that's where you, they cross at first.
And then maybe they come to Chiang Mai or they go to a third country, but most likely stay in Mae Sot
and stay, they stay in Mae Sot and in Chiang Mai. And what they need is that the first thing that
we do is we give cash assistance and if you know, women with, we give cash assistance, pads, guidelines of, you know, you say you don't go out after 8 p.m. in Mae Sot. This is how you, you know, this is how you don't walk around in Mae Sot, stuff like that, rules and regulations of, you know, Thai laws and how Thai authorities operate. These things we provide at first, when they first come into our safe houses. Did that answer your question? Thank you.
How can colleagues like us in different parts of the world support you? Oh, there's so many ways to support. You can support us. Then we can support. No, there's so many ways to support. It depends what kind of support, you know, you want to be supporting. Is it legal? Is it medical? Is it, you know, capacity building?
Because, you know, we also have language classes in both English and Thai because many of the young, you know, media professionals that become after journalists, after coup, they need capacity building in both, in everything, in languages, in podcasts, in video editing, what is ethical journalism, stuff like that. They need that. And also, how you can support. I have a case where we have a case where there's this photojournalist and that photo went quite viral. I don't remember the name of it, but he is one of our grantees and, you know, he wanted to have his photo, his photo was shown in Europe somewhere and he couldn't fly, you know, he couldn't fly because he doesn't have any legal documents. And that's not, he's not the only person who doesn't have any legal documentation. I've faced many people, you know, asking for emergency support under legal documentations. They don't have any PIN cards. They don't have any 10-year cards.
For those who don't know what 10-years card, PIN cards, they are, you know, for you to stay legal in Thailand. It changes all the time. First, in 2021, you're doing some PIN cards and then it costs XYZ and then it keeps increasing all the time. So, you can support in that also because for a media worker to, you know, stay in Chiang Mai, many of the people that we know, they go back to liberated area and they, you know, take news, they do their work and then they come back to rest and they come back to do their work. So, that type of thing, they need to move around, you know, journalists, they need to move around to take news from, you know, inside Myanmar. So, that is quite difficult. It's like they're stuck in a place. They're stuck in Mae Saw. Mae Saw is more hostile than Chiang Mai and Bangkok. So, for them to move around, they need legal documentations and we have helped some to, you know, apply PIN cards and 10-years card but it's still quite hard because, you know, it's getting so expensive and they open like maybe once a year or twice a year and we always have to like, oh, when is the window going to open? When are they
going to, you know, open the opportunities again? So, it's, you know, how do you want to support?
You can contact me directly too, you know, do you want to support medical, legal, legal documentations or vocational training, you know, podcasts. There's a few here that support our podcast training and it is successful. And also, you choose what you want to support and there's so many, you know, that you can support. Did I answer you?
Hello, I'm Ula from DVB. I'm just wondering, do you give support to freelance journalists only or also journalists from established independent media like DVB, everybody?
Yeah, yeah, yeah. We do, not only freelancers. We do support, we have a few from DVB, Eroity, big media houses, small media houses all the time. But the needs are always different. If it's smaller media houses and freelancers, they, you know, smaller media houses, they relocate from Myanmar to Thailand. Then we try to, you know, support, you know, like I said, we support us in like finding funds for them to relocate and that's not what actually we do, but, you know, we try because, you know, there's such a need for them to, you know, otherwise, how can they like, you know, move to Thailand or even relocate? So we try to support everyone that comes to, you know, us and ask for help, whether it's relocation fees or, hey, can I stay at your safe house in Chiang Mai or in Man Saw a few days? Yes, of course you can. So we have supported so many.
I should have the numbers on the slides because I cannot remember I'm getting old, but I'll give it to you how many and, you know, there's so many media houses that we have supported and individuals also.
Hi, this is Nyei. I am also an ASI journalist here for almost 25 months now in Chiang Mai. Thank you, Dee Ma for your very great presentation and your work, your organization work for the journalists in ASI and both like mentally and physically, very helpful, we say. And rather the question I would like to add to the comments, like as Dee mentioned that they support different kind of to ASI journalists, but the issue is that there are many journalists here in Chiang Mai and Mae Saw as well as in Bangkok. And like most of these support is kind of life, likely emergency reports, emergency supports, but like they are also the professional support like language and podcast training, something like that. But the deep issue is like, you know, drawing at media support for Myanmar media especially. And there are many news media outlets and who rely on the media organization as well as the ethnic and regional media organization. And they, you know, most of the media organization, they cannot survive anymore here in Thailand. And what's
happened to them is they cannot go back to the country and there are many journalists stuck in
both Mae Saw and Chiang Mai.
So I would like to request here, there are many of you in this room, many of you are journalists and working in different countries and report about Myanmar because we don't see many report about Myanmar in international media. And that is the one that you can help us to highlight. And also, Ms. Dee had a lot of network, many journalists, both women and men, and they have a different story and there are many different story, interesting story that you might be interested in to cover. And I think that will be great to have a chance to cover about Myanmar journalists as well. Thank you.
Thank you, Ma. I didn't bring my glasses so I didn't know who you were until you said your name. Thank you. I don't have any comment to that because, you know, what you say is perfect. Any more questions, comments?
Hello, this is Eva from DW Academy. Yeah, thank you, Dee, quite impressive, your presentation. And as you know, I know about also a lot of additional trainings that Exile Hub is organizing in Chiang Mai and in Mae Saw around mental well-being and digital safety that you mentioned earlier. But maybe if there's a little bit more time, maybe you can elaborate on that and share with the audience what are those trainings about and why they are needed. Thank you.
You mean digital safety, right? Or mental well-being as well. I mean, your choice. Yeah, okay. We can start with digital first because mental well-being is quite broad. With digital safety, we, we, because, you know, we hear comments and feedback from journalists all the time, like, hey, you know, you come and give U.S. and other, other people come and give, provide trainings in digital safety, but nobody gives them equipments, you know, it's just, there's a theory and then there's no practice and there's no money for that.
So we do connect with some of the organizations to, you know, provide both equipments and both, you know, training so, you know, it can be holistic. We try at least. And we also, as an organization, me, I am not good with digital at all. So just a few months ago, we had for our own, our own organization, we tried to have, how do you call it, digital security workshop for our own team because it's important that because we have so many important data in our, our laptop, at our place, you know, and how to, how to keep them safe is something that is very important because, you know, if it goes leaks then it can be very dangerous for other media professionals also. So that's digital safety. Mental health, we have, forgot to mention that we have a, in podcast training, we have a season where they, the, you know, the participants talk about in series where they talk about mental well-being, how having a cat is, you know, is also a therapy, how, you know, they talk about that in podcast.
And we have a page called Mian Charge and it is targeted for an audience like journalists to, you know, read about mental health content because I write half of it and we have another person writing half of the content. It's so important because, you know, in, in 2021, we, in 2021 and early 2022, there's journalists, they don't want to come and, and, and come to our emotional workshops. It's like, what is it? Why should we, why should we express our feelings to one another? You know, they, they, it's like the others are more important than their feelings.
What's going on in Myanmar is more important than their feelings, you know, and it is a stigma around mental health. Not only in Myanmar, I believe it's also in Southeast Asia, you know, speak about your feelings. So for us, from 2021 and early 2022, it was so hard for, for journalists to come to our workshops. But more and more, one, one year and a half now, we have, first, we started with like 10 participants. Barely 10 participants were applying at our workshops and now we have 90, 100, 150 people applying and we can only choose from 10 people to 15 people to, to attend at our, our workshops and, you know, through, and we always have these assessment pre-test, post-test, you know, how were they feeling before this? How were they coping?
Their stress and their trauma and their depression and how are they coping and how did our workshops
help and our individual counseling help them with? And, and we have those assessments and from those assessments, I can say that, you know, their mental well-being improved after coming to our workshops. And it's not only one workshops, you know, we have, we start with emotional well-being workshops and there's resilience workshops and those who don't want to talk about their feelings or, you know, do one-on-one with, with therapists, they can come, they come to our, the Man Charge page to read about our, you know, content and or come to our kickboxing classes and personal safety classes to get, you know, their anger out.
So there's so many ways to cope with their, you know, their anxiety, stress and their mental well-being.
How are you doing in terms of funding and for people here who are not based in Thailand and, you know, want to help, are there ways they can donate to the Exile Hub?
Um, if we have a page with a password, which is supposed to be here, I, I can give it to you because I'll send it in the, in Telegram as well, where you can go to our, our page, how you can support, there's so many ways to support, we can start, depends what you do, you're in the, I went to this Noodle community group.
We're always connecting with, if there's a journalist, a female journalist, whatever journalist, a transgender journalist, who wants to, you know, pitch something. And if that's something that is not in our capacity, then we, you know, connect with other organizations. If it's your organizations and we connect with them, either that, or, you know, you come directly to us, we can talk about, you know, how we can work together. Um, funding in 2021, not so good. 2022, not so good. 2023, we try to be sustainable. So, um, in terms of funding, those who are outside of Myanmar who do not know anything about what's going on in Myanmar and journalists in exile, you can always contact Exile Hub. And also there's many more here, other organizations also.
But you can, um, I'll come to you later. We can share Telegram, Signal and emails. We don't have a business card for safety.
Hello. I am Sumo from the data news agency. Um, and, um, journalists from Myanmar and being in exile nearly two years. So, uh, today I just want to, uh, comment about that, uh, our situation. As I mentioned,
um, as we have a long list, uh, we, uh, which, uh, Nick supports. So, yes, uh, our situation is now the big problem is how we sustainability in Thailand and how we survive for the next year and coming years.
Actually, we have no answers. So we stay trying and we stay hopeful, uh, a lot of the support. So, uh, the journalists, uh, before the coup, the numbers of journalists were very big. After the coups, that number decreased due to the safety. So the journalists who flee from the country, they're still walking in hard conditions and a lot of the financial problems and the income and the family cases. So now in this situation, uh, if there is any support, uh, they assess the walking journalists, maybe the professional journalist number maybe more decreased. So in, uh, yes, uh, my comment, comment is, um, if they can't support anymore in coming years, Myanmar journalists, maybe on the list or in dangerous professionals. Thank you.
Thank you. Thank you.
Hi, this is Juju from Frontier Myanmar. And, um, I just have one question about how you take measurement, like how you, uh, what, what is the measurement you take before supporting each journalist asking for the support or help? Um, what, uh, what is the measurement that you take? Like, um, what's the condition that, um, to qualify for your support or like criteria?
Yeah. Yes. Some criteria is that, um, that you take. Um, like I said, emergency support, um, it's not something that, you know, within our, how do you phrase this? It just happens. Uh, we are, we just happened to, first we, we started with housing and everything else. Yes, that's something that we do. That's in our program, but with emergency, uh, support, we just recently had somebody just had an accident. It's, and it's not something that you can like to ignore, you know, uh, because, you know, uh, they, they don't have any, um, legal documentation or they don't have any money for that. So we try to connect the journalists with the other organizations that, you know, can support medical or, you know, any accidents happening.
In terms of, uh, criteria is we, we prioritize, uh, women journalists for sure. Um, and freelancers, uh, CJs, and then, uh, um, journalists working in big media houses, but rather smaller media houses, freelancers, women journalists than big media houses.
Thank you, Ma Dee for sharing what you've been doing, which is very amazing. Thank you for that. I'm Grace. I'm also, uh, I'm, I work for Media Development Investment Fund. I work mainly with Myanmar media. Most of our partners are Asian media as well. So I, what I want to comment about is the health issue, health, you know, support that you mentioned. So there are two things that, you know, the organization can support regarding health, especially in Thailand. When people migrate to Thailand,
health is not free. It's very expensive, especially when the accident happens.
So there are two different things for those who are living, there are several journalists here who live in Thailand as a student with a student visa. So for those, they can buy health insurance, but having health insurance is very expensive. So for us, you know, like at MDIF, we provide health insurance for our partners who hold a student visa, but we have our own limitation, right? We cannot, you know, support every journalist here who lives with a student visa. So that's the one of the support that another organization can consider for Myanmar journalists.
And then the other support, you know, for those who are living, like as you said, pink who are living in Thailand with a pink card or the 10 years visa, there is the insurance available and, you know, offered by the Thai government called Thai Universal Insurance. Most of the journalists do not know about that. So I think, you know, since you have the platform, that is one thing that you can share among the design journalists network, especially for the freelancer. So that one is not very expensive. It's quite cheap and then, but you, they have to go through several, several official process to get it. So that's what I want to share. Thank you.
Thank you, Ma Grace for sharing. We do, we do provide M fund. There's a M fund in Thailand, but it's a long process. It's complicated, even I don't have it. It's a long process, but it's useful for those who don't hold any, any cards, you know, if you're in Mae Sot, if you are in Mae Sot with no cards, just a police card. Police card is like you pay a monthly 500, 600 baht to Thai police. Even for those who can get an M fund, it's quite difficult. We do try to get those M fund for our fellows. We, we call our, you know, community journalists, our fellows, and we, we try that. But like Ma Grace said, it's quite limited and it's a long
process and complicated process.
So, yeah. I realized that medical insurance is quite, quite expensive and it's, it's crucial actually. Even I'm, I'm considering these days, I don't have medical insurance. So I'm like, I need to get that. Just in case something happens, you never know, you know.
I didn't expect to get so many questions and comments, you know. I wasn't ready for that. But thank you. Thank you for joining. Thank you guys.