Blogging Burma: how a web of tech-savy chroniclers challenged censorship, poverty and fear to tell their story

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BLOGGING BURMA:
HOW A WEB OF TECH-SAVY CHRONICLERS
CHALLENGED CENSORSHIP, POVERTY AND FEAR
TO TELL THEIR STORY

by

Hanna Ingber Win

A Thesis Presented to the
FACULTY OF THE GRADUATE SCHOOL
UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
In Partial Fulfillment of the
Requirements for the Degree
MASTER OF ARTS
(PRINT JOURNALISM)

May 2008

Copyright 2008 Hanna Ingber Win
ii
Table of Contents
Abstract iii
Article 1
Bibliography 27

iii
Abstract
Digital media and new forms of technology helped fuel an explosion of political
activism in the totalitarian state of Burma (also known as Myanmar) in September 2007.
Burmese risked their lives to document the largest demonstrations in their country in
almost 20 years. At the height of the protests, close to 100,000 monks and lay people
marched through cities across the country to demand political and economic reforms.
The junta effectively prevented the international press from covering the
demonstrations first hand by simply locking foreign journalists out of the country, but the
news got out nonetheless by way of cell phone pictures, blogs, expat publications and
instant messages.
An elaborate network of political actors including former student activists,
censored journalists and bloggers generated a flow of information in several directions.
News of the demonstration not only reached the outside world, but also flowed back into
Burma, spreading word of the protests and serving as a communications channel for the
dissidents and their sympathizers.
The extreme circumstances of the Burmese protests illustrate the rise of a new
phenomenon: the activist-journalist who utilizes new technologies to play multiple roles
in a political conflict. And, exploring this extreme case may also illuminate how those
technologies are blurring the line between activism and journalism in much more
ordinary circumstances.

1
Moe Oo works as a journalist in a city overflowing with scandalous, compelling
stories that haven’t been written. His government is so corrupt people must pay lepay
phoe – tea money – to get a business permit or have their baggage checked at the airport.
Give some extra lepay phoe and with that a traffic ticket or even a murder charge
disappears. Schools can’t afford textbooks; hospitals go without basic medicine. The
ruling junta sent a man to prison, where guards allegedly torture dissidents, for passing
out copies of the UN Declaration of Human Rights.
And yet, Moe Oo can’t write about any of it. He lives in Rangoon, Burma
(renamed Yangon, Myanmar), where the government censors every word before it’s
published, every movie before it’s viewed, every painting before it’s shown in a gallery.
The government’s Press Scrutiny and Registration Division ensures that nothing is
published that might make Burma look bad. Any word or song or cartoon that implies
that the junta is not leading the country on the road to democracy and prosperity doesn’t
make the cut.
Moe Oo (all names of those living inside Burma have been changed to protect
their identities), 36, has a decent job as a magazine writer, but he makes barely enough to
survive. Like everyone in Burma who doesn’t have connections to the ruling generals,
Moe Oo’s electricity goes out on a regular basis. His son is two-years old and relatively
lucky to be alive. Burma has the second highest child mortality rate in Asia, second only
to Afghanistan. Average GDP per capita in Burma in 2007 was $239, according to the
International Monetary Fund. Less than 1 percent of the population has access to the
Internet, and only the very wealthy or those with ties to the generals can have a cell
phone, which costs about $2,000.
2
Moe Oo’s life changed in September 2007 when digital media and new forms of
technology helped fuel an explosion of political activism in this totalitarian state. Moe Oo
and others like him risked their lives to cover the largest demonstrations in Burma in
almost 20 years. At the height of the protests, close to 100,000 monks in maroon robes
and lay people in their traditional sarongs, called longyis, marched through Rangoon,
Mandalay and other cities to demand political and economic reforms. The junta
effectively prevented the international press from covering the demonstrations first hand
by simply locking foreign journalists out of the country, but the news got out nonetheless
by way of cell phone pictures, blogs, expat publications and instant messages.
Chronicles of the September demonstrations focused on how ordinary citizens
capitalized on new technology to break through the Burmese junta’s block on news and
inform the international community of the uprising. But, there was more to the story. An
elaborate network of political actors, most of whom were far from ordinary, generated a
flow of information in several directions. News of the demonstration not only reached the
outside world, but also flowed back into Burma, spreading word of the protests and
serving as a communications channel for the dissidents and their sympathizers. That
network included former student activists who had spent years being tortured in prison
and censored journalists like Moe Oo who had never before had the opportunity to report
on politics in their own country.
The intricate web of actors involved in reporting the demonstrations, and their
success in such an extreme environment, made the chroniclers’ ability to break the
government’s control on the news noteworthy. Burma ranks 164 out of 168 countries on
Reporters Without Borders index of press freedom, and only 214,000 out of 47 million
3
people have cell phones, according to the CIA World Factbook. Burma may be a
particularly severe environment, but the events there last fall represent an increasingly
common phenomenon in authoritarian regimes across the globe as digital media allows
political activism to succeed in new forms and styles.
***
The Burmese government’s strict censorship of its media and its refusal to allow
foreign reporters into the country unless they stick to chaperoned propaganda tours
usually enables the junta to control information on what happens inside its borders. It
makes it difficult to obtain accurate statistics as well as get news out of the country on
everything from the nation’s education system to the military’s use of forced labor and
child soldiers in its border areas. The censorship also hinders the spread of information
from one area of Burma to another. When I lived in Rangoon in 2003, working for a year
at a government-censored newspaper called the Myanmar Times, I did not know that a
bad storm had struck western Burma until my aunt in Westchester, New York, read about
it and emailed me to make sure I was safe. The junta controls all news it deems
destabilizing, including weather reports.
However, when demonstrations broke out in cities across the country last fall,
Burmese living inside and out succeeded in documenting the uprising and subsequent
crackdown and then distributing that information to Burmese exiles, the international
community and Burmese back home. Most of the media reports have concluded that
ordinary people or so-called citizen journalists were responsible for spreading the
information. Their story is a compelling one:
4
"When traditional methods and professional journalists can't provide footage, and
personal safety allows, citizens rise to the challenge time and again, often with
remarkable material," according to Ellana Lee, the managing editor of CNN Asia Pacific,
as quoted in the Wall Street Journal on September 28, 2007. "Even in countries like
Myanmar, the spread of the Internet and mobile phones has meant that footage will
always continue to get through and the story will be told, one way or another."
Citizen journalists played an important role, but the story is bigger that that. A
complex collection of journalists, activists, former political prisoners, protesters, bloggers
and lay people worked together to bear witness to the uprising.
Most of the chroniclers fell into multiple categories. Almost all of the journalists
working for Burmese exile media in neighboring Thailand and India are former student
activists, and some of them were political prisoners.
The founding editor-in-chief of Mizzima News, a multimedia outlet based in India
that follows politics in Burma, once hijacked a plane to raise international awareness of
the political situation in Burma, which has been ruled by a military dictatorship since
1962, as reported in the New Zealand publication Scoop. In 1990, Soe Myint and another
student from Rangoon University used a fake bomb to force a Bangkok-to-Rangoon Thai
Airways International flight – carrying 220 passengers – to continue east to Calcutta.
“We were able to create some public awareness about Burma with this action, and
able to do something for Burma’s movement for democracy and human rights,” said Soe
Myint last September, as reported in Scoop. Soe Myint said he did not think Burmese
protesters should follow his lead and hijack a plane, but he thought they should be able to
use other forms of non-violent action to strengthen their movement.
5
Soe Myint, who spent three months in jail and was ultimately acquitted on anti-
hijacking charges, went on to start Mizzima News in New Delhi in 1998. The
publication, which has since received funding from the George Soros’ Open Society
Institute and the National Endowment for Democracy, was a leading source of news
during the September events.
The founding editor-in-chief of the Irrawaddy, another leading publication
following news in Burma that is based in Chiang Mai, Thailand, also has roots in political
activism. Aung Zaw was a student activist during Burma’s largest national uprising in
1988, when hundreds of thousands of students took to the streets all over the country to
demand political reform. The junta responded to the peaceful protesters in 1988 – like it
did in 2007 – by opening fire. Aung Zaw was arrested in 1988 before fleeing to Thailand.
In 1993, he set up the Irrawaddy, which is now funded largely by European Union
governments. His brother, Kyaw Zwa Moe, who works as the publication’s managing
editor, spent 10 years in prison for his political activities. Both brothers say they were
tortured while held captive, and both were unable to attend their mother’s funeral in
1994. Aung Zaw could not return home for fear of arrest; Kyaw Zwa was in prison.
The Irrawaddy’s news director, Yeni, is also a former student activist from 1988.
When Yeni was a college student, he stood in the crowd in front of the US Embassy in
downtown Rangoon as soldiers shot at and killed countless students. By the end of the
months of bloodshed, the junta had killed at least 3,000 students and activists around the
country.
Yeni and thousands of other student protesters – dubbed the 1988 Generation, or
sometimes just the 88ers – fled to the thick rain forests along the Thai-Burma border.
6
They formed armed resistance groups, hoping to create a new army strong and
determined enough to fight Burma’s infamous Tatmadaw. They didn’t succeed. In 2002,
Yeni moved to Chiang Mai to work for the Irrawaddy magazine. He hasn’t been home
since.
(Disclaimer: This reporter has written articles for the Irrawaddy, and her husband
is a Burmese exile himself who worked for the publication for two years. He too cannot
return home for fear of persecution.)
Toe Zaw Latt, the bureau chief of the Democratic Voice of Burma, a multimedia
publication based out of Norway, said that six DVB editors – including himself – were
part of the 1988 generation and active in the national uprising. Some were political
prisoners.
The exiles who run publications from Burma’s neighboring countries as well as
those who work for the Burmese language versions of the BBC, Radio Free Asia and
Voice of America, insist that they work as journalists, writing or producing fair and
balanced stories. “The exiled Burmese media have proved to the world, through their
professional integrity, skills and talent, that they can function as effectively as any other
medium in the world,” Aung Zaw wrote in a commentary for the Irrawaddy last January.
They seem to consider being called dissident or opposition media a grave insult. They
consider themselves journalists.
The Burmese junta has no problem deciding what to call them. Conveyors of
unauthorized information are simply described as “stooges” and “destructive elements”
with ties to the C.I.A. Senior General Than Shwe, the leader of Burma’s military junta,
called on his government to "to crush every danger of internal and external destructive
7
elements obstructing the stability and development of the State,” in a speech on Armed
Forces Day in March 2007. He was referring to exile media, opposition groups and
Western countries.
Anyone outside of Burma seeking news of that closeted country has to make more
subtle judgments about the information networks that flourished during the protests there.
Applying traditional American norms of journalism is hard enough in places like Western
Europe where the press has an honored tradition of partisanship, and the exercise is all
the more complicated in a place like Burma where the practice of independent,
American-style journalism results in imprisonment, exile or worse.
Certainly, the Burmese chroniclers see themselves as seeking the truth and
striving to write fair and accurate articles. And, the usual rules of objectivity—getting
both sides of the story—are not so easy to apply when dealing with a regime like the
Burmese junta. Nonetheless, it should be noted that the Burmese exiles are deeply
affected by the news they cover, and at times they have an explicit agenda. "While there
has not been a united policy [among exiled Burmese all over the world] the struggle is
going to continue, and we're going to keep on reporting until we see a change in the
government," said Aung Zaw, the founder of Irrawaddy, last November, as quoted in an
article in the Inter Press Service.
Given such strong statements of intent, the Burmese exiles would be judged
activists rather than journalists by American standards. But, the distinction may be
inappropriate to this case and misleading as well. The extreme circumstances of the
Burmese protests illustrate the rise of a new phenomenon: the activist-journalist who
utilizes new technologies to play multiple roles in a political conflict. And, exploring this
8
extreme case may also illuminate how those technologies are blurring the line between
activism and journalism in much more ordinary circumstances.
In addition to the exile journalists, a collection of trained reporters and editors
working undercover in Burma were responsible for documenting the September events
and disseminating that information to the media outlets on the outside. While ordinary
citizens did play a role, the semi-trained journalists were responsible for the vast majority
of the images and reportage. When they got arrested or were interrogated by soldiers,
they said they were ordinary citizens because they did not want to be further punished for
collaborating with exile media. Similarly, those organizations also did not want the
government to know how many undercover reporters it had working inside.
Another component to the collection of chroniclers were the Burmese – like Moe
Oo – and foreigners who were trained reporters but could not publish their photographs
or stories in their own publications. Instead, not wanting the biggest story of the past two
decades to go unreported, they sent their information abroad anonymously.
“Many journalists were sending information out but were disguising who they
were,” said Phil Thornton, who has lived on the Thai-Burma border for more than seven
years and is the author of Restless Souls: Rebels, Refugees, Medics and Misfits on the
Thai-Burma Border (Asia Books, Bangkok, 2006). He added that ordinary citizens still
played a significant role.
Burmese bloggers also played an instrumental role in gathering information on
the protests and disseminating it to other Burmese living inside as well as to the
international community. Kaung Kin Ko was living in Bangkok to get his masters degree
in E-Commerce Technology. The schools and universities in Burma are so atrocious
9
anyone with the ability to study abroad does. A scrawny, soft-spoken young man, Kaung
Kin Ko is 30 but doesn’t look a day older than 16. He too is a former student activist;
when he was a university student at Yangon Institute of Technology, he participated in a
small student movement against the junta in 1996. The government then closed all
universities for four years out of fear of more student unrest.
Not wanting to write for censored newspapers in Burma, Kaung Kin Ko dabbled
in journalism by editing Wikipedia entries like the one for 1988 student leader Min Ko
Naing. When the 2007 protests began, Kaung Kin Ko decided to start a blog, he said,
because new forms of media can provide information faster than traditional media. He
said he wanted to motivate people to boycott their government.
Other Burmese living abroad came of age after the 1988 and even 1996 student
movements, and they too became wrapped up in this latest uprising and were eager to
participate by disseminating information. Ye Thu, a 25 year old living in Chiang Mai,
never before cared about politics. He viewed the 88ers, who were in their late 30s and
40s, as “old people.” Ye Thu would get bored when they talked incessantly about the
need for change in a country that never changed. But, Ye Thu, like many in his
generation, became outraged in 2007 when they saw photographs of Burmese soldiers
storming monasteries and beating up and killing monks, their religious and spiritual
leaders. Working as a translator at DVB, Ye Thu used his connections and friends inside
Burma to spread information to DVB reporters and journalists working abroad.
Through the exile media, student activists, trained journalists, censored
journalists, bloggers and lay people, the protesters and chroniclers not only got the
information out of the country but also effectively controlled the story. The junta, which
10
has never been great at public relations anyway, totally lost control of the narrative. The
world media carried the activists’ message and their version of the events.
This assortment of characters sent information, photographs and video clips out of
Burma to the exile and international communities. Their coverage made the news all over
the world, from Al Jazeera to the Washington Post to BBC.
Once the information was in the hands of the exile community, those actors sent
the news back into Burma in the form of radio broadcasts, online coverage, emails,
instant messages and phone calls. By sending the news back inside, the exile community
succeeded in covering the demonstrations for a community otherwise cut off from its
own political events, encouraging more protesters to take to the streets and enabling
protesters to know where to go to join the demonstrations.
The protests spawned a new kind of information network, an impromptu
assemblage of people connected by digital media who conveyed information in several
directions and thus played an influential role not only in how those events were perceived
but also in the unfolding of the events themselves.
Getting the Information Out
Scatterings of bald, barefoot monks are often seen walking the streets of Rangoon
with their heads bowed and their alms bowls lifted, accepting food donations in exchange
for merit. Occasionally, especially on holidays, long, single-file processions walk through
the city, praying in unison and filling the streets with the sound of the Metta Sutta, or
Buddhist chants. One Saturday last September, Burma’s monks were out on the streets,
but they weren’t collecting food. Their alms bowls were turned down in a dramatic show
11
of protest. Hundreds marched through the streets of Rangoon in maroon robes, defying
the Burmese junta and protesting against the government’s suppression of its people.
The monks were not alone. A group of civilians equipped with cell phones and
cameras followed behind them.
The monks and eyewitnesses marched through Rangoon and then, as if their
political activism in a totalitarian country wasn’t enough, they turned down University
Avenue – the street where Aung San Suu Kyi, the beloved hero of Burma’s democracy
movement, has lived under house arrest for 12 of the past 18 years. Suu Kyi led her party
to victory in the 1990 elections but was never allowed to take power. She was, however,
awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1991 and is an international symbol of non-violent
resistance to the junta. The monks and their followers continued down the avenue, and
for some reason the soldiers, who always stand guard to block visitors or journalists, let
them pass.
Chanting the Metta Sutta, they marched directly up to Suu Kyi’s lakeside house.
Soldiers with riot shields and blue helmets formed a line between the country’s spiritual
leaders and the political leader. Then, for the first time in more than four years, their hero,
known simply as the Lady, appeared in public, emerging from her house to greet them
with tears in her eyes.
Tears poured from the protestors, and the crowd erupted in cheers: “Be in good
health,” and “Be free very soon,” as reported in the Irrawaddy.
The moment was brief, but it was captured by the protesters’ cell phone and
digital cameras, sent around the country and inspired a sense of hope in all Burmese
eager to overthrow their government and be ruled by Suu Kyi. Within hours, the
12
photographs popped up in countless emails and blogs around the world. The junta
censored any coverage of Suu Kyi’s appearance on state media inside Burma, but by
Saturday evening, the Irrawaddy in Thailand had posted an article on its website with a
photograph taken from the back of the protests. The picture will not win any awards for
its artistic or technical qualities, but it does not have to – it conveyed the moment, gave
proof that the monks had met Suu Kyi, and she had given her nod to the protests.
Despite the almost complete absence of foreign correspondents in the country, the
story soon appeared in publications all over the world, from the New York Times to the
BBC to the South China Morning Post. No matter how hard the government had tried to
lock the Lady away and control all news about her, it had failed in the face of cell phone
cameras.
One person who went to the demonstrations every day to photograph and bear
witness to the marches was Moe Oo. A journalist by profession, Moe Oo wanted to cover
the uprising even though the magazines he writes for would never have the audacity to
print his stories or images. Each time he heard of a protest, he grabbed his Canon A430
digital camera and video camera, threw them into his bag and rushed to the scene. He
took a taxi to speed his journey and avoid getting caught with the cameras, already
considered new tools of political dissent by the junta.
Unable to publish his photographs in Burma, he went to an Internet café after
each demonstration, downloaded the images and sent them to blogs based abroad like
Moemaka Media (http://moemaka.blogspot.com/), a political blog written by a Burmese
man living in San Francisco, and to publications covering the uprising from Thailand,
like the Irrawaddy and DVB.
13
Moe Oo soon grew frustrated with the slow speed of the Internet at the cafes, so
he visited his friend who uses a satellite connection to gamble – illegally – on premier
league soccer matches. “We have one common thing,” Moe Oo later wrote via Google
Talk: both he and his friend were using the Internet illegally.
People like Moe Oo offered the international community, including the Burmese
living in exile, a window into the uprising. Images of peaceful, barefoot monks dressed in
maroon robes marching through the streets of Rangoon, Mandalay and cities across
Burma appeared on the front pages of newspapers across the world for weeks last fall.
The New York Times sourced exile groups, who relied on information leaked out, almost
every day of its coverage during the protests.
Burmese journalists and amateurs “constructed a number of blogs and posted
information and photographic evidence,” said Dr. Thaung Htun, the United Nations
representative for the Burmese government in exile. “It became totally impossible for the
regime to control the news.”
From the start of the protests, there was a sense of hope that these demonstrations
might bring about real change in Burma because the monks were at the forefront. Many
people thought the junta, despite its reputation for brutality and terror, would never have
the audacity to gun down the nation’s spiritual leaders.
“Most of my friends [thought we would] achieve at this moment because the
power of monk is very powerful,” blogger Kaung Kin Ko told this reporter a few months
after the demonstrations while eating at a Burger King in Bangkok. “People think soldiers
won’t kill monks.”
14
At the same time, people knew that the junta had always before responded to
demonstrations with violence and therefore watched the protests with unease and
trepidation.
“People very scared for past experience as 88,” an HIV counselor wrote on
Google Talk during the protests.
A teacher wrote: “We’re eager to see the changes, and we don’t want to see
anything going out of hand.”
When the people’s worst fears came true and the government began its violent
crackdown on the monks and other demonstrators, journalists like Moe Oo documented
the bloodshed.
Troops stormed monasteries overnight, beating up and arresting the peaceful men
in red. Soldiers surrounded the monasteries and kept them on lock down so thousands of
monks could not join the demonstrations the following day. The next morning photos
flew around the Internet of monasteries looking like battle zones, with blood on the
floors, dishes smashed and doors broken down.
Tens of thousands of protesters took to the streets again, but they were met with
larger blockades and truckloads of troops. And then, the soldiers started firing.
“They are shooting! They are shooting!” The Irrawaddy reporters screamed from
their office in Thailand. They were on the phone with their sources and could hear the
shots through the phone. Al Jazeera was playing on the newsroom TV, broadcasting the
crackdown into the office. Most of the reporters were very emotional and some started
crying, Yeni, the Irrawaddy news director, later recalled.
15
“I felt really angry,” he said, months later. But unlike the younger staff, Yeni did
not break into tears. “I cried many times in 1988 – I know they will shoot and take
serious action on the demonstrations.”
Images of the crackdown flew around the Internet. Shaky video clips showed
troops standing in position, ready to fire. Some showed soldiers beating up monks. Others
depicted bloody slippers left behind on the streets. Ye Thu sent this reporter a photograph
of a student’s brains, which had been blown of out his head, lying in a gutter.
Photographs appeared on blogs showing monks bleeding from the head, and teenagers
badly injured. One showed a naked monk lying face down in the muddy Rangoon River,
his sarong wrapped up around his head.
The junta admitted killing 15 people; the United Nations said at least 31 people
died; and most political analysts assume the number could be ten times that.
An American living in Rangoon sent his friends photographs of protests near Sule
Pagoda. The collection included an image of a truckload of troops arriving at the protests,
and then an image of people running from the soldiers who had started shooting at the
crowd. They ran up Sule Pagoda Road, past the dilapidated buildings and shops that
normally sold sweet Burmese tea, Indian naan and fried pastries. The photographs, never
published in Burma, went sent to this reporter who then published them on
Washingtonpost.com, where they became available for the international community as
well as anyone inside Burma with access to the Internet.
As the assault on the protesters continued, with soldiers firing teargas and then
guns into crowds of monks, children and peaceful demonstrators, the junta targeted
anyone caring a camera. It set up blockades and searched bags for video equipment.
16
Soldiers shot and killed Japanese video journalist Kenji Nagai while he was filming
protesters at Sule Pagoda, at the heart of the demonstrators. The death of a foreigner got
picked up around the world, leading governments to further condemn the junta. But the
generals did not back down: soldiers continued to shoot into crowds and arrest protesters.
Then, almost a week after the monks visited Suu Kyi, the government made its
next move: it shut down the Internet. The junta had belatedly discovered the protesters’
most powerful information tool and took it away. For the first time since the
demonstrations began, emails, photographs, video clips and instant chat messages
stopped flowing out of Burma.
The New York Times’ “Quote of the Day” on October 4 came from Aung Zaw:
“Finally they realized that this was their biggest enemy, and they took it down.”
Nepal is the only other state to have cut off international Internet links in an
attempt to sever ties to the outside world, according to OpenNet Initiative. The Nepalese
king did so after declaring martial law in 2005.
“Although extreme, the measures taken by the Burmese government to limit
citizens’ use of the Internet during this crisis are consistent with previous OpenNet
Initiative findings in Kyrgyzstan, Belarus, and Tajikistan, where authorities controlled
access to communication technologies [inside the country] as a way to limit social
mobilization around key political events,” according to its report, Pulling the Plug: A
Technical Review of the Internet Shutdown in Burma. “What makes the Burmese junta
stand out, however, is its apparent goal of also preventing information from reaching a
wider international audience.”
17
Yet it wasn’t all silence. One voice managed to come out and popped up on my
husband’s computer screen in Los Angeles: “They r beating at 39 street.”
A few such messages continued to flow out of the country, mostly coming from
offices that used satellite Internet like those at embassies or connected to top generals or
businessmen. Some managed to use the Internet at night – an American living in
Rangoon said the junta turned the Internet back on during curfew hours.
But overall, the junta’s twin crackdowns on protesters and bloggers were
successful. Both the spread of news and the size of the demonstrations trickled down to
almost nothing. The few daring souls who stepped into the streets to protest were quickly
shooed away by soldiers with guns.
With the demonstrations contained, the government focused its efforts on
arresting anyone who participated in or watched the protests. It used the photographs and
video footage of the demonstrations to arrest anyone it could identify, totaling more than
2,000 people.
Against All Odds
The Burmese brought international attention to their uprising and the
government’s bloody crackdown despite the fact that most people in Burma don’t have a
telephone, let alone access to the Internet.
About 0.56 percent of the population – less than 300,000 people – use the Internet
in Burma, according to a report by OpenNet Initiative, an organization that researches
Internet filtering and surveillance. Its report states that Burma is only one of 30 countries
with less than 1 percent Internet penetration. Neighboring Thailand has an Internet
18
penetration rate of 19 percent whereas China, Zimbabwe and Sudan all have a rate
around 8 percent, according to OpenNet Initiative.
“One percent of people in Burma have access to the Internet, and they made the
most use of that,” said Bob Dietz, the Asia program coordinator for the Committee to
Protect Journalists. Even though the low Internet penetration means it may not be able to
bring about a sweeping revolution, Dietz added, “I think the value of the Internet in this
situation was that it carried [the news] outside and informed the world, which is an
important, valuable thing.”
As protesters took to the streets of Burma in 2007, their story was being
chronicled practically instantaneously hundreds of miles away. Over in Thailand, the
phones at the Irrawaddy office in downtown Chiang Mai rang incessantly as the handful
of reporters dashed about the office, calling their contacts, writing stories, reading emails
and chatting with sources inside via Google Talk.
During the height of the demonstrations, Yeni sat at his desk at the Irrawaddy,
furiously taking notes as a monk told him he was marching through Rangoon with
thousands of other barefoot monks. The monk continued to talk to Yeni on his cell phone
while he marched down the street with the other monks, pushing the cars, antiquated
buses and rickshaws to the sides. As the monks marched past, the teashops, which usually
spilled out over the sidewalks, closed down. The men rose from their tiny, 12-inch high
plastic chairs to greet the monks and then join the procession. The monk passed his cell
phone to others in the crowd, each describing the scene to Yeni with the same sense of
euphoria and disbelief. Cell phones gave Yeni and his readers a front row seat to the
action.
19
“I’m crying,” the monk screams Yeni over the phone. “Can you hear me? The
people are shouting!”
As the protests continued and the DVB office exploded in activity, Ye Thu sat at
his computer in Chiang Mai and chatted on instant messenger with his friends still in
Burma, his own sources during the uprising. A friend worked at Sakura Tower, one of the
only high-rise buildings in downtown Rangoon, and gave him updates on the street
activity below. Ye Thu passed her information along to DVB reporters, his friends living
abroad and international journalists, all connected via Google Talk.
“They are shooting people at Sule [Pagoda] now,” Ye Thu wrote to this reporter
via Google Talk on September 26. He said there were 20,000 protesters gathered there.
“One got shot on his chest,” he wrote.
“Are people running away or still protesting?” I wrote back.
“Running. A friend of mine saw them carrying out the wounded. We just
interviewed him.”
Two minutes later he wrote: “Monks are being raid at they monasteries…And
they are currently clashing with soldiers in South Okkapala [township]…Soldiers fire
tear-grenades into monastery buildings.”
Ye Thu got his information from phone calls, instant messages and emails. His
friend at Sakura Tower sent him constant updates. “She and her coworkers looked down
from the window and saw people running and soldiers beating up protesters right on the
streets,” Ye Thu said months later. “They were shouting out the windows to the soldiers –
cursing at them.”
20
In addition to chronicling the events, publications like the Irrawaddy also
provided context and analysis on the situation to the international community. The editors
became sources of information for the major news companies, including The New York
Times, which covered the protests from Thailand because the junta did not allow the
reporter, Seth Mydans, to go into Burma. Exile reporters wrote in-depth stories and
commentaries to explain the significance of these protests.
The international media flocked to the exile media for help covering the 2007
uprising. And rather than rely on them as interview fixers like in the past, they began to
give the exile media credit for their work, according to DVB’s Chiang Mai bureau chief
Toe Zaw Latt. DVB’s footage of the demonstrations appeared on BBC, CNN, the
Associated Press, Al Jazeera and Reuters, he said.
“A difference between 1988 and 2007 is that in 1988 the foreign journalists
reported the uprising, and this time the home-grown journalists report,” Yeni said.
Other Burmese living abroad covered the protests and crackdown through blogs.
During the September events, Kaung Kin Ko went to a private place in his university’s
library or on the ninth floor of his building, gathered information from exiled and
international media sources, Youtube and friends, and wrote his blog on his laptop.
His blog received close to 40,000 visitors from September to December and
reached Burmese living in Thailand, Singapore and around the world.
Moe Oo said he knew the risk he was taking snapping photographs during the
2007 crackdown. “They only will put us behind the bars for three decades…haha,” he
wrote on Google Talk, lightening the situation with a dose of sarcasm. Later, he took on a
21
more somber tone and said yes, he was scared the police might come knocking on his
door one night.
“Sometimes I so scared frankly,” he said. “Can’t sleep many nights.”
But despite the risks, Moe Oo said he felt it was important to show the world what
was happening because he believed that if the international community paid attention,
someone would come to Burma’s assistance.
“I do believe that what I am doing is important for my society,” he said.
Sending the News Back
While the Burmese chroniclers broke through the junta’s censorship wall and
reached the international community with news of the protests, they were playing an
equally significant role inside the country. The exiles working for DVB Radio, Radio
Free Asia and other radio stations cannot operate inside Burma so their reporters and
sources inside send them information to Thailand, and they then broadcast the news back
into the country via short-wave radio, the main source of news for people in Burma. DVB
Radio and TV reach more than five million people a day, compared to 15,000 daily from
its website, according to Toe Zaw Latt.
In addition to the use of radio to spread the news, new forms of technology and
digital media were crucial in providing visual evidence of the demonstrations to people
inside Burma. When the monks met Suu Kyi at her home, the photographs appeared on
news sites and blogs that Burmese inside the country could access. The Lady’s implicit
endorsement propelled the monks’ protests into a national political fight for regime
change, democratic rule and improved living conditions. Over the next week ordinary
civilians joined the demonstrations in growing numbers.
22
One blog showcasing images from the meeting of Suu Kyi and the monks was Ko
Htike’s Prosaic Collection (ko-htike.blogspot.com/). The photographer took the pictures
from so far back in the crowd one can only make out a group of civilians and monks. Ko
Htike therefore drew a circle on the photo where Suu Kyi was presumably standing and
wrote above it, “Daw Aung San Suu Kyi.” Daw is a term of respect for one’s elders and
literally means aunt. Ko Htike has since blocked out another photo in the series,
presumably to protect the identity of the subject(s).
Ko Htike, a Burmese based in London, offered more up-to-date news on what was
happening inside Burma than any publication inside Burma. Many people in the country
flocked to blogs for minute-by-minute updates. Ko Htike’s became the blog-of-choice for
many young people who were educated enough to use the Internet and tech savy enough
to use proxies to get past the junta’s firewalls that blocked pro-democracy sites.
The proxies, often called “freedom” software, are servers that connect to a third-
party server and thereby allow Internet users to access web pages that the government has
blocked. Searching via a proxy also allows the user to visit websites anonymously, which
is incredibly important in places like Burma where visiting the wrong website can land
you in prison.
Kyaw Kyaw is another young Burmese man who was trained as a journalist but
prohibited from covering the protests for any publication based inside. Every day Kyaw
Kyaw went to an Internet café in Rangoon to read Ko Htike’s blog. There he found
photographs of the monks protesting, an assortment of international articles covering the
uprising and a chat box where Burmese from inside and out discussed the demonstrations
and how they could be effective. When Kyaw Kyaw read comments about how the
23
Burmese would not be successful because they didn’t have weapons, he found online
instructions on how to make a bomb and emailed them to Ko Htike, who never posted
them, Kyaw Kyaw explained on Google Chat.
Like Kyaw Kyaw, other members of the exile media went beyond the accepted
bounds of journalism. The Chiang Mai bureau chief of the DVB said his news outlet did
not just chronicle the demonstrations – at times, it enabled them.
Protesters would call the DVB office in Chaing Mai and say: “ ‘Where are we
supposed to go? Where is the people at?’ ” Toe Zaw Latt said, laughing at his role as
facilitator. “A lot of people! And we’d say, ‘Oh, we just interviewed. We heard in
Tamwe [Township]…we heard in here in Sule [Pagoda]…we heard here in Shwedagon
[Pagoda].’ ”
Exile groups also fostered a sense of community and common purpose inside
Burma. People at a demonstration in one city, such as Rangoon, took photographs with
their cameras or cell phones and then sent those images to exile groups, who resent the
images back into the country to other cities, like Mandalay. This enabled people
protesting in Mandalay to know that their countrymen were also protesting in Rangoon.
Perceptions that the demonstrations were widespread appeared to encourage the
protestors. By contrast, in 1988, when there were no exile groups working on the border,
people protesting in different cities were isolated from each other.
Nonetheless, the feedback loop via exile media played only a limited role in
fomenting the protests, which were mostly organized by traditional means. Members of
the National League for Democracy, the largest opposition group in Burma and Suu
Kyi’s party, notified most people of the protests’ locations and times by calling on land
24
lines or walking house to house and knocking on doors, according to Min Min who works
for the NLD. They relied on people taking the information and spreading it by word of
mouth.
Too few people have cell phones to rely on them, Min Min said via Google Talk.
Burma, a country of about 47 million people, had 503,900 landlines in 2005 and 214,200
cell phones in 2006, according to The CIA World Factbook. If more people had cell
phones, Min Min added, the activists could have been better organized and the
demonstrations could have been stronger.
Six months have passed since the September events, and in most ways the
situation in Burma has gotten even worse. The electricity goes off more often; prices of
goods continue to rise. The junta has clamped down, still holding about 800
demonstrators and continuing to arrest anyone they find with a camera or connected to
the protests. If they have a photograph of someone watching the protests from the
sidelines, they arrest her. If the soldiers can’t find the activist, they arrest his or her
parents.
A poet was jailed in January for publishing a cryptic anti-government message,
and one of the country’s most famous bloggers, Nay Myo Latt, was arrested in January
and remains in prison. Soldiers also arrested my husband’s close friend, Thet Zin, who
was the editor of Myanmar Nation, one of the few publications in Burma without ties to
the junta. Government officials arrested Thet Zin and his office manager, Sein Win
Maung, after raiding their office and finding video CDs of footage from the 2007
demonstrations and a UN report on the government crackdown. They remain in prison.
25
Since January the junta has blocked the website Blogger.com, which was the only blog
platform accessible in Burma.
Nonetheless, Burmese inside the country and in exile maintain a sense of hope
that change will come to their country at least in part because knowledge of the 2007
protests is so widespread.
“The September events made me angry,” said Ye Thu, who used to roll his eyes
in boredom when his friends brought up politics. “You see how fucked up this
government is. It makes you hate the military more.”
His generation already knew the Burmese government did despicable things, they
all grew up hearing about 1988, he said, but seeing the footage of the 2007 protests and
the government crackdown on monks made it real. “Before we only heard about that,” he
said. “ Now we see.”
The 88ers, guys like Yeni and Toe Zaw Latt, point to Ye Thu and his generation
as proof that change will indeed come to Burma. It is now up to the 2007 generation to
keep the movement going, Yeni said. Inside Burma the 2007 generation are mobilizing
an underground network of university students. They paint anti-government slogans on
walls, distribute anti-government albums and create anti-government artwork. “It’s now
another generation’s movement,” he said. “They’re still keeping their hope [for] change.”
I have not heard from Moe Oo in months. I do not know if soldiers arrested him
for taking pictures and then talking to a reporter, or if he is too afraid to return my emails.
If I started inquiring about his whereabouts, I could expose him. My inability to know
what is happening in the life of my source is indicative of the challenges for anyone
relying on information under such extreme circumstances. Last January, the last time I
26
met Moe Oo on Google Talk, he said he doubted there would be a major uprising in the
near future, but more and more people were listening to short wave radio – a source of
uncensored news for those without access to the Internet – and engaged in politics. I
asked Moe Oo if he felt like it was worth it to risk his life by taking photographs of the
demonstrations and sending them to blogs and exile media organizations, even though the
junta has maintained its grip on power.
“Of course, definitely,” he wrote. “Coz I believe that there will be change one
day.”
27
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Abstract (if available)

Abstract Digital media and new forms of technology helped fuel an explosion of political activism in the totalitarian state of Burma (also known as Myanmar) in September 2007. Burmese risked their lives to document the largest demonstrations in their country in almost 20 years. At the height of the protests, close to 100,000 monks and lay people marched through cities across the country to demand political and economic reforms.

Linked assets

University of Southern California Dissertations and Theses

Asset Metadata

Creator Win, Hanna Ingber (author)

Core Title Blogging Burma: how a web of tech-savy chroniclers challenged censorship, poverty and fear to tell their story

School Annenberg School for Communication

Degree Master of Arts

Degree Program Journalism (Print Journalism)

Publication Date 04/11/2010

Publisher University of Southern California (original), University of Southern California. Libraries (digital)

Tag bloggers,citizen journalism,Myanmar,OAI-PMH Harvest

Place Name Myanmar (countries)

Language English

Advisor Suro, Roberto (committee chair), Bar, Francois (committee member), Parks, Michael (committee member)

Creator Email hingber@gmail.com

Permanent Link (DOI) https://doi.org/10.25549/usctheses-m1105

Unique identifier UC1280865

Identifier etd-Win-20080411 (filename),usctheses-m40 (legacy collection record id),usctheses-c127-51567 (legacy record id),usctheses-m1105 (legacy record id)

Legacy Identifier etd-Win-20080411.pdf

Dmrecord 51567

Document Type Project

Rights Win, Hanna Ingber

Type texts

Source University of Southern California (contributing entity), University of Southern California Dissertations and Theses (collection)

Repository Name Libraries, University of Southern California

Repository Location Los Angeles, California

Repository Email cisadmin@lib.usc.edu