Three women journalists held up necklaces during a panel on exile in Perugia. One carried a Star of David from St. Petersburg. Another had a necklace given to her by her mother before she fled Myanmar. The third wore a pendant shaped like the map of Nicaragua, a country whose government stripped her of the documents proving she belonged to it.
The gesture was simple, but it captured what the discussion had been about for nearly an hour: the fragile objects, memories and identities women journalists carry with them when authoritarian governments force them into exile.
The panel, titled Unseen Burdens: The Invisible Backpack of Women Journalists in Exile, brought together reporters from Nicaragua, Myanmar and Russia to discuss the realities of continuing journalism after displacement. Organized by DW Akademie during the International Journalism Festival in Perugia, the conversation explored not only censorship and repression, but also the gendered forms of violence that often accompany exile.
“Exile Was Never a Choice”
For Hsu Mon Phyo, co-founder of the Delta News Agency, the decision to leave Myanmar followed the military coup of February 2021.
Independent media organizations quickly became targets of the junta. Journalists were arrested, newsrooms shut down and press licenses revoked. Hsu Mon and her colleagues initially relocated to territory controlled by ethnic armed groups near the Thai border, hoping they could continue reporting from there. But escalating military attacks soon made even those areas unsafe.
“The military raided the area and attacked with airstrikes,” she said. “I had to flee again.”
Eventually, she crossed into Thailand. More than four years later, exile remains defined by instability: uncertain legal status, difficulties registering media organizations abroad and declining international funding for independent Burmese journalism.
“Some women journalists have had to abandon their careers because they need to take care of their families,” she said. “We want to continue this work, but the reality is very difficult.”
A similar sense of inevitability shaped the experience of investigative journalist and author Irina Novik, who left Russia after the full-scale invasion of Ukraine and the announcement of military mobilization in 2022.
Now based in Lithuania, Novik continues reporting on crimes committed by Russian soldiers during the war. But exile, she suggested, does not create distance from repression. It simply changes its form.
Her family remains in Russia, where authorities have increasingly targeted the relatives of independent journalists and dissidents labeled “foreign agents.”
“I’m constantly worried,” she said, describing fears that police could eventually raid her mother’s home.
Gendered Threats
For journalist Abigail Hernández, the threats she faced in Nicaragua were inseparable from her identity as a woman. Before fleeing the country, she spent months moving between safe houses while being followed by men in civilian clothes. She survived an attempted kidnapping and was detained twice while reporting. One threat, she said, has never left her memory.
“A pro-government journalist told me: ‘Watch your face. Women like you always end badly.’”
According to Hernández, authoritarian regimes often weaponize sexism to intimidate women reporters. The threats are designed not only to silence journalism, but to target women’s bodies directly.
“The message is that they can destroy your body, your face, your supposed beauty,” she said. “They want you to know they have the power to rape you if they want.”
Even after crossing borders, many of those threats continue.
A few weeks before the panel, Hernández received a photograph of her home in Nicaragua accompanied by a message reminding her that authorities still knew where she was.
Costa Rica, once considered a relatively safe destination for Nicaraguan journalists, no longer feels secure, she added.
“The police told us publicly: ‘We cannot protect you. You should leave the country.’”
The Weight of Family Separation
Again and again, the conversation returned to the emotional consequences of exile, particularly the rupture of family life.
Hernández described becoming “a daughter, sister and friend in absence.” For security reasons, communication with relatives often becomes irregular and carefully controlled.
“You feel your family disappearing little by little,” she said.
Novik also spoke about the impossibility of separating professional and personal identities.
“I’m not only a journalist,” she said. “I’m also a mother.”
The pressure is particularly acute for women journalists, many of whom continue caregiving responsibilities while trying to rebuild careers in unfamiliar countries with unstable immigration status and limited financial security.
For Hsu Mon Phyo, the collapse of funding for exiled media has intensified those pressures. Many journalists support not only themselves, but entire families displaced by conflict or persecution. The result, she said, is that exile gradually pushes some women out of journalism altogether.
The Stories That Disappear
The panelists argued that the disappearance of women journalists from newsrooms has consequences far beyond representation. Hernández said women reporters often bring different perspectives to coverage of violence, inequality and social issues.
“When men report that hundreds of women were killed, it becomes data,” she said. “Women journalists talk about the children left behind, the mothers, the communities.”
She pointed to coverage of gender violence, land rights, education and climate change as areas where women journalists have expanded traditionally male-dominated news agendas across Latin America.
Novik added that women journalists often establish trust on subjects such as reproductive rights, women’s health and LGBTQ+ issues in ways male reporters may not.
Their work, the panel suggested, is not simply about inclusion inside journalism. It shapes which realities become visible at all.
Holding On to Identity
Toward the end of the discussion, the panelists were asked to bring an object representing either the burden they carry or what helps them continue. Without planning it, all three brought necklaces.
Novik held up a Star of David necklace from St. Petersburg, a reminder of both her Jewish identity and the city she still considers home.
Hsu Mon Phyo showed a necklace given to her by her mother before she fled Myanmar. “When I miss home and my mother, I think about this,” she said.
Hernández lifted the pendant shaped like Nicaragua and explained that she no longer possesses Nicaraguan documents. After the government targeted dissidents and journalists, she was forced to obtain Honduran papers through her father’s nationality.
“But I am still Nicaraguan,” she said, as the audience applauded.
Without official documents, she added, exile can feel like “a kind of civil death.”
By the end of the panel, one message had become unmistakably clear: exile does not end when journalists cross a border. For many women reporters, it continues through surveillance, uncertainty, financial instability and separation from family, all while they attempt to keep reporting on countries they can no longer safely enter.
Yet despite those conditions, many continue working.
Their journalism has become more than a profession. In many cases, it is one of the few remaining ways to resist disappearance.
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This article was developed with the assistance of AI using a transcription of the panel “Unseen Burdens: The Invisible Backpack of Women Journalists in Exile“, at the International Journalism Festival in Perugia. It was edited and reviewed for accuracy by a NEMO journalist.