Raided- Detained- Cancelled: Episode 2 - Detained 2021

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Dictators and corrupt governments routinely jail journalists. Does it actually silence them? Or does it embolden them to continue reporting on the abuse of power?

JNI's Lisa Main will be joined by two journalists who have been detained for doing their jobs. Nathan Maung was jailed by Myanmar's military junta during their crackdown on media, alongside his colleague Han Thar Nyein, who remains in prison. And Okke Ornstein was jailed in Panama for his reporting on government corruption and fraud, around the time the Panama Papers revealed the country to be a tax haven. 

Were their journalistic principles tested? How did they remain defiant? Have they kept working in the face of these grave risks? 

Nathan Maung was arrested and imprisoned in Myanmar in March 2021 alongside his colleague, producer Han Thar Nyein. At the time Nathan was working as the founding editor-in-chief of Kamayut Media, a news video streaming platform. Burmese-born Nathan was released from prison after three months and deported when military guards realised he was a US citizen. His colleague Han Thar is still detained in Insein Prison. 

Okke Ornstein was detained in Panama in 2016 over a story he wrote alleging government corruption and fraud by a Canadian businessperson. Bizarrely, the criminal defamation conviction that saw him imprisoned happened four years earlier. Okke ran a news website called Bananama Republic and worked with Al Jazeera and Dutch public broadcaster NTR. He served five weeks of his 20 month sentence because he was pardoned. Okke says his arrest confirmed 'Panama protects the corrupt'. 

Lisa Main is JNI's director of grants. Her journalism career spans Australia, the US and Middle East. She's worked across news and investigations at ABC, SBS, Reuters and Al Jazeera English. She helped establish ABC Fact Check, and in 2016 completed a fellowship at The Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism at Oxford University. Lisa has worked in strategy and social impact at PwC Australia and was a 2020 Startmate fellow. 

About the series

Raided. Detained. Cancelled. A three-part digital event series exploring the different ways journalists can be silenced.

There always seems to be someone who doesn't want a journalist to get a story out. Dictators stifling dissent. Governments protecting national security. Or the mob on social media forcing journalists off the page or even out of their jobs.

Raided, Detained, Cancelled focuses on the most challenging moment in any journalist's career: the moment when they might pay for a story legally, financially, professionally or even, in some cases, with their lives.

Join us for a series of live online conversations featuring journalists with first-hand experiences of being raided, detained or cancelled. We will hear their stories but also explore the reasons journalists are silenced, whether these efforts really work, and how journalists in different contexts around the world respond.