Banged up in Burma

At the same time, the Times must deal with the reality of official censorship. When the newspaper was first set up in 2000, the special relationship with the head of Military Intelligence gave it exemption from normal censorship – Military Intelligence, not the Ministry of Information, censored Dunkley's papers. But Khin Nyunt fell from power in 2004, and the Ministry of Information brought the Times into the censorship fold.

The loss of Khin Nyunt did not noticeably inhibit Dunkley. The paper is obliged to publish official propaganda releases, like every other newspaper in the country, yet put it alongside the government's own official mouthpiece, the New Light of Myanmar, and the contrast is immediately obvious. The Myanmar Times carries news people want to read – uncensored daily reports on the FIFA World Cup, reports on how anti-inflation measures have backfired and spurred rising petrol prices, an article on booming property prices based on interviews with real estate agents – all this in place of the verbatim parroting of government press releases which fill the New Light. The Myanmar Times delivers news, the New Light of Myanmar tells you how the generals spent their day.

There's no doubt that Dunkley, a former Walkley Award winner, Australia's equivalent of the Pulitzer, knows his craft, and possibly his single most lasting contribution to Burmese journalism will be the way he has trained up a whole generation of young Burmese in the methods and ethics of modern journalism. "Using funding from the Sasakawa Peace Foundation, the Myanmar Times has trained dozens of Burmese journalists to an international standard … creating journalistic capacity among people that may otherwise have become rickshaw drivers or clerks in office jobs." If, someday, a free (or merely freer) press comes to Burma, the journalists who will be ready to take advantage of it will be there because of Ross Dunkley.

Ross spent almost seven weeks in Insein. (The name means Diamond Lake – there's no lake, and no diamonds). At first he slept on the concrete floor of a cell 10 by 40 meters with about a hundred other inmates; later he was transferred to the hospital wing, where the floor was wooden and the food was better but not much else was different. But at least he was held in a smoke-free environment, for the authorities have a keen regard for the health of their prisoners and smoking is banned in Insein. Eventually he was released on bail.

How did it come to this, after almost eleven years of running probably the most successful newspaper group in Burma? What did Ross do wrong?

At one level the answer to that question is quite simple: he is alleged to have drugged, assaulted and held captive Khine Zar Win, thereby breaching the terms of his visa, since foreigners resident in Burma should not engage in criminal activities.

Nobody actually believes this.

So what really happened?

At the time of Ross's arrest there was much speculation that behind it lay a business dispute with his local partner, Dr Tin Tun Oo. Tin Tun Oo is medical doctor, a self-made publisher, and a very intelligent man. Probably all that separates him from Ross is the fact that one was born in a rich Western country and thereby had more scope for his talents.

Tin Tin Oo is not Ross's choice of partner: he was assigned to him by the Information Minister following the fall of Khin Nyunt. They were never particularly close. "We have a working relationship," Ross told an interviewer in mid-2010. "But I care more about the business and the country than he does. It's ironic that I'm the one trying to open things up and make them happen."

The lack of tact lurking in those comments brings us to the second of the words that always seem to be used by people describing Ross: brash.

In fact I came across this word so often that I looked it up in the dictionary, just to be sure. It means, says the Concise Oxford, "Rash; cheeky; saucy; vulgarly self-assertive." Very Australian, and not what Lee Kwan Yew would have called an Asian value.