NDTV.com: Myanmar: Virtual revolution via Internet

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Myanmar: Virtual revolution via Internet

Maya Mirchandani

Friday, September 28, 2007, (New Delhi)

For a country that's lived behind closed doors for almost two decades the fact that the images of a violent crackdown on anti-government protestors have made it to the outside world is nothing short of a miracle.

Credit for this goes not to international media but to the efforts of hundreds of Myanmar's citizens using the Internet and mobile phones to send first hand accounts, photographs and video footage to the rest of the world.

According to reporters without borders, Myanmar's Internet policies are among the most repressive in the world.

The regime filters opposition websites and forces Internet cafes to capture screen images every five minutes in order to monitor user activity.

Because of its prohibitive costs only one per cent of its population is believed to have access to the Internet and if today's reports are anything to go by, the military regime is moving fast to shut it down.

Citizen-reporters

Yet, a stream of blogs and mobile phone video has leaked out of the country as citizen-reporters made their way and used foreign embassy connections where the links are less restricted.

Mizzima News, run by Burmese exiles in India, has had over 50,000 hits on their site last Saturday when they posted photographs of Aung San Suu Kyi greeting marching monks.

For anyone who's followed recent Myanmarese history reports of these crackdowns are sadly familiar.

In 1988 the military killed 3,000 monks, civilians and students and brutally crushed a massive anti-government uprising led by Aung San Suu Kyi calling for human rights and democracy.

But this time technology is playing a crucial role in helping subvert the Myanmar government's attempts to control the media meaning that the eyes of the world are on Myanmar and its oppressive regime like never before.

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