Myanmar Blogger Arrested: One Voice Heard
by
on January 31, 2008,
There was a little-noticed bit of news out of Myanmar this week; a blogger, Nay Myo Latt, was arrested after writing about what is happening within the country, including increased loss of freedom following last fall's protests and subsequent government crackdown
As a blogger, I see stories like this fairly regularly coming out of countries with much more oppressive government controls of what people can do and say online. In Myanmar, this arrest is symptomatic of a much larger issue. I spoke with the spouse of a Burmese expatriate, living here in the U.S., to get a better understanding of the access to information and contact with the online community outside Myanmar.
According to my source, who asked to remain anonymous to protect family and friends still in Myanmar as well as safety during any future travel, the government control of Internet cafe users isn't new since the protests. During a visit last summer, these cafes (which really only exist in Yangon and Mandalay, which have more widespread Internet usage than other areas of Myanmar), patrons were required to submit fingerprints as well as personal information All access to free services such as Yahoo! and Google are blocked. Some savvier patrons manage to access sites outside of the allowed sites using anonymizing tools, but the government pays such close attention that access to anonymizers is quickly blocked.
On the whole, the Burmese people live in fear. Both foreign travelers and Burmese citizens are required to provide identifications at checkpoints throughout the country, register if they are staying anywhere other than their own homes (including hotels or other citizens' homes), and are tracked via regular paper reporting.
My source felt that, especially as the owner of Internet cafes, Nay Myo Latt knew exactly what would happen by posting the blog entry. In cases such as this one, it is likely that the dissident felt that the purpose far outweighed the potential risks; after all, Aung San Suu Kyi has been under house arrest for 12 of the last 18 years, even after winning an election whose results were summarily ignored by the regime.
I view blogging as many different things; an outlet, a news source, and a creative endeavor. People blog for many different reasons, but for Nay Myo Latt, it was an attempt to get news out of the country, so that others could understand the situation there and hopefully add more international pressure for the current regime to compromise with pro-democracy supporters. The story needs more attention, to make Nay Myo Latt's voice heard.
More information about loss of freedoms, including the ability to use the Internet to get news in or out of the country, can be found at The Irrawaddy and Mizzima News.
