Interesting People mailing list archives
Burma/Myanmar: protests, pictures and the Internet
From: David Farber <dave () farber net>
Date: Thu, 27 Sep 2007 11:59:23 -0400
Begin forwarded message: From: Date: September 27, 2007 10:24:38 AM EDT To: David Farber <dave () farber net>Subject: [PLEASE ANONYMIZE] Burma/Myanmar: protests, pictures and the Internet
[DAVE, PLEASE ANONYMIZE] For IP, if you wish: The pictures at Irrawaddy.org are riveting. Saddening, maddening. Inspiring. http://www.irrawaddy.org/ And there are a few video clips that have made their way as far as YouTube. One (relatively peaceful) one is http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TIpraH81paY The latest reports are 7:00p.m. Myanmar time, just an hour and a half ago (it's two and a half hours behind Tokyo). Protests seem to be stretching into the evening. One report is that a Japanese person is among the ten or more that have been killed. Hundreds of monks have been rounded up by the army. A few people have been shot, many beaten, after forty years of repression and isolation and previous attempts to throw off dictatorship and install a fledgling democracy. The first time I met a particular man, in 2003, he had just stepped off a redeye flight, returning from opening Burma's very first Internet connection. The pictures you see and reports you read may very well be traversing that line. Despite some reports, the Internet is apparently not *completely* cut off from there, as of yet. The fact that information leaks out through cell phones and the Internet no doubt alarms the junta, and may be a factor in staying the junta's hand. Are we looking at fifty-six million rising up and freeing themselves? Or are we looking at the next Tiananmen (which itself may have been worse if not for CNN)? Information is fragmentary, conflicting and delayed. I can do nothing from here, nothing more than encourage those outsiders who can pressure the junta, and even they cannot ultimately decide; only the Burmese people can. But I cannot look away. ------------------------------------------- Archives: http://v2.listbox.com/member/archive/247/=now RSS Feed: http://v2.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/247/ Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
Current thread:
- Burma/Myanmar: protests, pictures and the Internet David Farber (Sep 27)