Tag archive: Burma

Earlier this month we reported that Burma had timidly entered among the countries joining the Facebook revolutions. The Facebook page “Just Do It Against Military Dictatorship” gathered steam (which has since somewhat level off), and it appeared that activists were attempting to use the extremely limited Internet access Burma had. While every country involved in the social-media bred demonstrations has struggled against an oppressive… Read More

Social media continues to alter the face of revolution after the successful uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt. The revolutions both counties staged against their dictatorships and corrupt governments have taken hold of similar political regimes. Libya used Twitter (before losing access to the site) to bring attention to its own struggle, which has escalated in the last few weeks over the call for Moammar Gadhafi’s resignation. Even China, whose… Read More

Myanmar – the country formerly known as Burma – has been judged the most restrictive country for bloggers, according to a new report from the Committee to Protect Journalists. The junta ruling Myanmar blocked all Internet access for a while during uprisings in 2007. Coming second on the list is Iran, where blogger Omid Mir Sayafi died in Tehran's Evin jail. He’d allegedly insulted the country’s leader,… Read More

After the cyclone hit Burma nine days ago, the UN asked the charity group Telecoms San Frontieres (TSF), which is used to going into disaster areas and setting up emergency telecoms systems, to send a group and equipment to Thailand where they’d be ready to fly into Burma. They’re still there, waiting for entry visas from the military-run Burmese government. In that regard they’re no different from workers from so many… Read More

China, North Korea, Burma…they’re places where protest has been crushed. But yesterday people demonstrated against Net censorship in virtual locations from those countries.  Organized by the group Reporters Without Borders, the first Online Free Expression Day invited people to create avatars and take part in demonstrations in virtuallocations where protest would not be allowed in the real world.   In a statement RWB said,… Read More

A year-long study by the OpenNet Initiative, detailed at a conference in Oxford, England, examined the practices of 41 countries to learn about online government surveillance and censorship. The results? Where five years ago only a handful of states were filtering Internet content, the study found 25 of the countries it examined were engaged in state-mandated filtering and censorship of online content, and the filtering is becoming more… Read More