The 15-year-old reporter deleted the data from her phone and packed up her guitar as she set out to meet a guerrilla fighter in Myanmar. The instrument was mostly a decoy, there to disguise her work as a journalist. She cleared the data from her phone to protect her sources in the event of an arrest.
Greeting the fighter, she took out the guitar and strummed an old Burmese tune, "The Sound of the Crane.”
When she felt safe, she started her interview, quickly stashing the recording in a hidden folder on her phone after she was done. "Every time I go out to report, I always think that I might get arrested,” said Khaung, who works for the Burmese literary magazine Oway. Like the other journalists in Myanmar interviewed for this article, Khaung agreed to be interviewed only if her pen name was used, fearing repercussions from the military government.