Myanmar junta hikes satellite TV fees

By Aung Hla Tun

YANGON (Reuters) - Without warning, Myanmar's military junta has ordered a massive 166-fold rise in the annual satellite television levy in an apparent attempt to stop people watching dissident and international news broadcasts.

With no word in state media of any license fee increases, the first satellite dish owners knew of the hike was when they went to pay the 6,000 kyat levy, only to be told it was now 1 million kyat ($780), three times the average citizen's yearly income.

An official at Myanma Post and Telecom confirmed the increase on Wednesday, but was at a loss to explain it.

"It's not our decision," the official, who asked not to be named, told Reuters. "We were just ordered by the higher authorities. Even I was shocked when I heard about it."

The increase is way beyond the meager means of virtually all the former Burma's 56 million people, for whom international broadcasts such as Al Jazeera or Norway-based dissident network Democratic Voice of Burma (DVB) are the main source of news.

Without satellite, the only other television news is on rigidly state-controlled MRTV. The few private television stations avoid all current affairs in favor of a diet of soap operas and pop music.

Foreign and external media played a major role in the dissent in August and September that mushroomed from a handful of sporadic demonstrations against shock fuel price rises into major protests against 45 years of military rule.

Since killing at least 31 people in suppressing the protests, the ruling junta has sustained a relentless assault on the BBC, DVB, Voice of America and Radio Free Asia, accusing them of broadcasting a "skyful of lies."