It was only when he boarded the plane that would fly him to Europe that Mratt Kyaw Thu finally felt safe for the first time since Myanmar's military coup on February 1.
It had been an arduous few months for the journalist who quickly found himself on the military junta's wanted list for his reporting of its deadly crackdown on anti-coup protesters.
Before the coup, journalists had faced some restrictions while working, but after the takeover things became much worse. With pro-military informers pretending to be journalists, real reporters were viewed with suspicion by protest leaders and had to change mobile numbers often to avoid detection by the junta.According to monitoring group Reporting ASEAN, 87 journalists have been arrested so far, with 51 still in custody in figures correct to June 3.
"We're all just waiting for the knock on the door. Sometimes you hear footsteps on the stairs, and it's like they're coming for you: you have this feeling all the time," Mratt Kyaw Thu said. One particularly horrific image still haunts him -- that of a murdered activist from Aung San Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy.
Despite the military's lockdown on movement, he managed to reach a township near the Thai border with help from friends, NGOs, ethnic armed groups "and even some ordinary soldiers". Even after crossing the border, Mratt Kyaw Thu quickly realised it wasn't safe there either, fearing the Thai government would deport him back to Myanmar.
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