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How Burmese Dissidents Crack Censorship

Posted by samzenpus on from the monks-and-the-net dept.

s-orbital writes "According to a BBC News article, "Images of saffron-robed monks leading throngs of people along the streets of Rangoon have been seeping out of a country famed for its totalitarian regime and repressive control of information. The pictures, sometimes grainy and the video footage shaky, are captured at great personal risk on mobile phones — but each represents a powerful statement of political dissent." The article goes on to tell the stories of how Burma's bloggers use proxy servers, free hosting services, and other technologies to overcome Burma's "pervasive" filtering of internet access and news."

15 of 154 comments (clear)

  1. In tomorrow's news by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

    How the Burmese military crack dissidents skulls

  2. What about inside Burma? by gvc · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Thanks in part to bloggers, this time the outside world is acutely aware of what is happening on the streets of Rangoon, Mandalay and Pakokku and is hungry for more information.


    Sure, and I'm sure that the Burmese authorities would sooner the word not get out. But the principal role of censorship -- and one for which it is effective notwithstanding a few workarounds -- is to control widespread dissemination of the information within the population.

    Consider China, for example. Sophisticated computer users can find foreign news and commentary. But the masses have successfully been kept in the dark about, say, Tiananmen Square. This ignorance helps shape public opinion and marginalize those few who have access to the information.
    1. Re:What about inside Burma? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Consider China, for example. Sophisticated computer users can find foreign news and commentary. But the masses have successfully been kept in the dark about, say, Tiananmen Square. This ignorance helps shape public opinion and marginalize those few who have access to the information.
      While your general point is valid I do not believe your specific example is correct. As far as I am aware, the events in Tiananmen Square are common knowledge in China; certainly the Chinese people I've talked to know about it. What censorship has done in this case is prevented any great discussion about it, which helps prevent it from shaping opinions to the degree that it otherwise might. Suppressing knowledge of events is really hard, but suppressing their importance is considerably easier.
    2. Re:What about inside Burma? by MrSteveSD · · Score: 4, Insightful

      In western countries self-censorship by the media is often just as effective as organised censorship by an oppressive regime. George Orwell wrote about this back in the 1940s in an unpublished preface to Animal Farm. There are plenty of modern analyses of this though including "Manufacturing Consent" by Chomsky and Herman.

      In some ways media self-censorship is worse than state censorship, since with state censorship the populations often know they are being routinely lied to and are not getting all the facts. In countries with a free media like the US or UK, people have the illusion that they are getting all the facts and are more likely to trust what they are told. It's not always total censorship either. Sometimes the media will give a tiny mention to something that deserves an enormous amount of attention. That way they can always say they covered it when challenged. An example of this is COINTELPRO. You're likely to have to look that up, yet if I said Watergate, which is a story which broke around the same time, you are likely to know all about it.

      Language is important too. For example, if these protesters in Burma were to take up arms, they would be correctly described as insurgents, since the definition of insurgency (in all the major dictionaries) is about trying to overthrow your own government. Insurgency is completely the wrong term (again in all the major dictionaries) for armed groups attacking an occupying force, as in Iraq. With Iraq the media desperately tries to avoid using the term Resistance (despite it being the correct term) because it reminds people of the French resistance, who were clearly the good guys. Another example is the term "Private Security Contractor". Under the Geneva conventions there is no such thing as a Private Security Contractor. There are soldiers, civilians and mercenaries. The technically correct term for these "hired soldiers" is mercenaries, yet the media almost unanimously avoids the term. Talking about Private Security Contractors sounds ok, whereas if the media kept talking about mercenaries, people might not accept their deployment so readily.

    3. Re:What about inside Burma? by Foobar+of+Borg · · Score: 5, Insightful

      The difference is that most Americans are under the illusion that we still have a free press.

      --
      Similar to the upcoming US election results
  3. Free Burma by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    Get Involved in the Struggle to Free Burma!
    http://www.freeburma.org/

  4. Who? by thatskinnyguy · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Who really is being subversive in totalitarian regimes? The people or the government? The people are practitioners of freedom whilst the government employed by these people are being dissident. I say put a rifle in the hands of every able-bodied man and woman in Myanmar and see how things change.

    --
    The game.
    1. Re:Who? by plover · · Score: 4, Interesting

      I say put a rifle in the hands of every able-bodied man and woman in Myanmar and see how things change.

      That's the approach we successfully employed in Afghanistan. We taught the mujaheddin how to resist the Soviet invaders and taught them the principles of insurgency, which they haven't seem to have forgotten yet. And in Iraq, we sold peace-lovin' Saddam Hussein the weapons to defend himself against Persian aggression, which he peacefully used to help the Kurds avoid an uprising, and peacefully used to liberate Kuwait... and now we're rearming the Iraqi police to defend against those same weapons.

      So if at any point you continue to think it is a good idea for us to keep providing arms to other people, just start flipping through your history books or your newspaper. Seriously, I think a U.S. invasion would be better than a weapons deal, simply because we wouldn't leave the weapons behind after the fighting is done.

      --
      John
  5. Misleading title by SnoopJeDi · · Score: 5, Insightful
    From TFA:

    The regime stopped focusing on policing its virtual borders after a power struggle which resulted in the ousting of former Prime Minister Khin Nyunt in October 2004, explains Mr Brussels.
    This sounds more like a case of the system breaking down and allowing people to slip through, not really people cracking some sophisticated censorship system.
  6. How do you fight budhist monks? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    I mean, they reincarnate over time, kinda like Doom on nightmare-difficulty.

  7. Radical Religionist... by WED+Fan · · Score: 5, Insightful

    The radical Christian blows up others and buildings.

    The radical Muslim blows himself up with others.

    The radical Budhist sets himself on fire, after he makes sure that no living things are around him to get hurt.

    --
    Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly and applying the wrong fix.
    1. Re:Radical Religionist... by Conspicuous+Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Go to Sri-Lanka sometime, or any other place with a majority Buddhist population. Some of the chief agitators in the Sinhalese-Tamil conflict are Buddhist monks, and the Buddhist clergy there have the same set of backwards social attitudes as clergy anywhere else. The Dali Lama ran close to a fascist regime in Nepal before the Chinese moved in, and instituted an almost fully fascist one.

      There's this this utterly blue-eyed view of Buddhists around that just doesn't tally with the facts.
      Sure Buddhism preaches non-violence and enlightenment, and that's a good thing, but it's followers are as violent and judgmental as anyone else. Christianity preaches love and forgiveness while practicing violence, repression and judgment. I don't know the details of what Islam preaches but I assume it's the same story.

      I have no problem with personal religion, but I don't have much time for churches of any ilk; giving any person the power to speak for God (or indeed the Buddha) is just foolish.

  8. Power Does Not Corrupt by WED+Fan · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Aung San Suu Kyi has said, "Power does not corrupt. Fear corrupts. The fear of losing power corrupts."

    --
    Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly and applying the wrong fix.
  9. Call it Burma by spoonboy42 · · Score: 5, Informative

    Noticing a tag about the name "Myanmar", I thought I'd explain the controversy over the country's name. The official name of Burma was changed to Myanmar by the ruling military junta. Since the pro-democracy movement doesn't recognize the legitimacy of military rule, they and their supporters around the world continue to use the name Burma.

    --
    Anonymous Luddite: "What do you think of the dehumanizing effects of the Internet?"
    Andy Grove: "Not Much."
    1. Re:Call it Burma by jellie · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Since we're on the topic of names, I might as well add that some countries, like the US and UK, use "Burma", whereas the UN (perhaps for diplomatic reasons) uses "Myanmar". Most refer to the people of the country and the official language as "Burmese". And, for what it's worth, the name of the country actually sounds more like "Myanmar" than "Burma" - apparently the latter was a poor transliteration.