Can't Repress the Net


	Fearing retribution from Burma's military government, exiles are willing to pose for the camera but ask that their names be withheld. (Photograph by Pablo Bartholomew)

hey call it the "magic uprising." In 1988, angry Burmese students, unionists, and political activists rose up against the murderous government regime, which had sealed the country off from the rest of the world. The military crackdown that followed forced some 12,000 citizens to flee for their lives, mostly to Thailand and India. But those exiles are continuing the struggle, fomenting opposition to the ruling generals and sharing hard-to-find information -- with help from the Internet.

Like many stories related to the Net, the wiring of the Burmese diaspora started with an element of serendipity. It was 1993; a North American activist, who now goes by the tag "Strider" to guard his identity from Burmese intelligence agents, was in Thailand working on a project about the sexual trafficking of Burmese women. A fellow activist in Bangkok whose fax machine wasn't working asked Strider to email a message to the Soros Foundation, which promotes freedom in Eastern Europe and repressive societies around the world. It turned out that the foundation was looking for someone to link exiled Burmese activists to the Net; three days later, Strider received a grant to make it happen.

"The Burmese were skeptical as hell," Strider recalls. "It didn't make sense to them that they could send out so many messages for free and that the messages would get there so quickly. They come from a country where many people don't even have phones." Thus, BurmaNet was born, from which came the Free Burma website.


	Burmese political exiles in New Delhi, India, have lunch while listening to a smuggled videotape of Aung San Suu Kyi, Burma's Nobel Prize-winning opposition leader. (Photograph by Pablo Bartholomew)

In addition to news and notes on activism -- for example, promoting a boycott of PepsiCo, which has bottled soft drinks in Burma since 1991 -- the Free Burma website posts personal accounts of torture such as that of Naw May Paw, 55: "My whole legs were horribly burned by the hot dagger being drawn up and down. . . . Then they tied me up and beat me around the hips with a bamboo pole. I was screaming, 'I'm going to die.' They shouted at us: 'Tell us about the rebels!' But we're just village women; we don't know anything about that."

Online activists won a big battle in December 1995 against the Voice of America; according to the students, it had been broadcasting a steady stream of propaganda favorable to Burma's regime. When activists got their hands on a U.S. government cable documenting the biased reportage, they posted it on the Net at one in the morning. Seven hours later, the director of Voice of America called them for a meeting and reassigned the guilty parties. Since then, the programming has improved immensely.

Burmese officials, not known for being cyber-savvy, are beginning to appreciate the power of the Net themselves. The Burmese Embassy in Washington, D.C., has assigned an intelligence agent to keep tabs on the online activism, says Strider. "I was amused that his function in life is to monitor the Net war."

http://sunsite.unc.edu/freeburma/