MUMBAI, India — There was a time when Ross Dunkley, my former boss at the Myanmar Times, was a powerful man. Today, he sits in a prison cell.
I remember Ross storming into the newsroom in Rangoon after having stayed up all night drinking. Ross, a tall Australian with broad shoulders, wore a power suit. His head was bald and shiny.
“Come on, Hanna,” he commanded, waving his arm in the air. “We’re going to lunch.”
We arrived at Trader’s Hotel. “Sake, sake!” Ross shouted at a young Burmese woman standing near the entrance. She looked confused and walked off.
“Sake, sake!” Ross yelled. Another woman brought over a kettle, which Ross took out of her hands. He poured me a cup.
“No, thanks,” I said. “I have articles left to edit.”
Ross pushed the cup closer to my face. “When your boss tells you to drink, you drink!”
The Burmese junta detained Ross, the publisher and co-founder of the Myanmar Times, on Feb. 10, and today he is being held at the infamous Insein prison in Rangoon. Officially he’s been arrested for immigration violations, but there is speculation he will also be charged with possession of drugs and prostitution.
Ross, who founded the paper in 2000 with a once-powerful Burmese businessman, has a controversial reputation. But most Burma watchers assume his arrest has nothing to do with sudden allegations of age-old behavior.
Instead, it’s being seen as evidence of a government doing everything it can to cling to power. Ross’ arrest comes during a time of transition in Burma, and the government has responded to this period of possible instability by tightening control, said Toe Zaw Latt, the Thailand bureau chief of Democratic Voice of Burma, a leading news outlet on Burma run by exiles.
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