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Burma Gets Internet Freedom for the First Time

Watching Burma, which has been ruled by an oppressive and brutal military junta for more than half a century, undergo a breakneck transition into an actual, tentative democracy has been one of the strangest and most thrilling developments in years...

Burma, a nation ruled by a brutally oppressive military junta for more than half a century, has undergone a strange and thrilling breakneck transition into an actual, tentative democracy. I visited Burma—which the junta renamed Myanmar in 1989—three years ago, and there were still ironclad restrictions in place everywhere you looked. No press freedom, no elections, no congregating in groups larger than five people, no staying out after dark. No blogging.

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I remember walking by an “internet cafe” in Myawaddy; it seemed to boast just a single dusty old PC running Windows 95. Meanwhile, just fifteen miles away on the other side of the border, dozens of Thai teenagers huddled in their internet cafes playing Counterstrike at download speeds faster than I had at home. But thanks to the junta’s iron fist—that same year, Foreign Policy ranked Burma’s ruler, Than Shwe, the third worst in the world, behind Kim Jong-il and the genocidal Robert Mugabe—and economic sanctions imposed by the international community, Burma was stuck firmly in the past. Most Burmese didn’t have any access to the internet at all.

Internet Free Burma

Those who were fortunate enough to have Internet access knew everything they wrote was being scrutinized by the regime, and that unflattering prose could land them in prison for years. Nay Phone Latt, perhaps Burma’s most celebrated blogger, started a website where he shared poetry and talked politics in 2007. In 2008, he shared a satirical cartoon that criticized Than Shwe. As a result, he was sentenced to 20 years in prison for violating the overwhelmingly dubious ‘Electronics Act.’ A colleague was sentenced to two years for posting an apparently less-incendiary poem.

To get around the clampdown on the press, which left the nation with just propaganda-spewing newspapers and television stations, the Burmese relied on word of mouth and the internet to get reliable information. The Democratic Voice of Burma, for instance, is an amazing online news outlet that employs reporters who work in secret on the ground, and file stories to the base of operations in Norway, where their server is located—that way, the regime can’t shut it down. My friend Samy, who himself is a Burmese refugee living in Thailand, and who helps the DVB with translation and reportage from time to time, has always said that nobody trusts anything published inside the country.

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But that may change. Earlier this year, Latt was released from prison 16 years early, along with hundreds of other political prisoners. It was one of the surprising and encouraging steps that has followed in the wake of one of the most remarkable political transformations currently taking place—last year, Than Shwe handed power over to the bureaucrat Thein Sein, who has since allowed the first free elections in decades. They were corrupt, but they showed progress enough to garner the support and participation of Aung San Suu Kyi, the world famous democracy advocate that the regime has kept under house arrest for most of the last 20 years.

Burma’s Internet is Now Freer than China’s

A host of other changes have followed, including ceasefires with the minority groups in the north. And now, Sein is taking the biggest plunge of all: last Monday, his cabinet announced that Burma will, for the most part, stop censoring the press. Until now anything printed, aired, or published at a news site online had to first get the approval of the regime. No more, the government says.

Tint Swe, the chief official for the Press Scrutiny and Registration Department—which is an actual bureau and a pretty great example of the kind of oppressive Orwellian agency commonly found in Myanmar’s government — told the AFP that it was abolishing press censorship.

“For now on, local publications do not need to send their stories to the censorship board,” Tint Swe said. “Censorship began on August 6, 1964 and ended 48 years and two weeks later.”

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Now, 300 newspapers and magazines have been given the go-ahead to start publishing stories without first getting approval from the PSRD. And perhaps more importantly, restrictions have been lifted on 30,000 websites used in the country. There’s still a back-and-forth going on between the public and the government, which wants to install a new sort of oversight body, but interestingly, the government has relented each time. The relatively few internet users in Burma now have relatively unfettered access to political websites for the first time ever. If the regime keeps its word, Burma will suddenly enjoy more internet freedom than China. And the ex-PSRD boss relished saying so.

Last March, he said, "if you want to see censorship, don't come to Myanmar, go to China."

But remember, most Burmese won’t be using it; not for a while anyway. There’s still a massive amount of infrastructure that needs to be built before Burma can effectively go online. And it’s not like there’s all of a sudden going to be a great free press in Burma, either. For one thing, film censorship remains in place. And there’s still a wacky set of “guidelines” that reporters and publishers must follow when addressing “sensitive” topics like government affairs—and some journalists are worried that their work could land them in even more trouble if officials find fault with their reportage after the fact. Finally, these steps should be regarded as tentative; the regime has a rich history of going back on its word, sometimes violently.

Which is another important point: Burma is making impressive progress, but there’s still much to be concerned about. The military is still engaging in what many call ethnic cleansing in the Kachin state to the north (where Samy is from), there is still rampant corruption and favoritism in the supposedly now-democratic government, which is still dominated by ex-military rulers. And there is still a truly stunning gulf between the wealth of the ruling elite and the destitute poverty of the poor.

All of which makes a free, and freely accessible press all the more important during the nation’s wobbly regeneration. With foreign investment rearing to pour in and NGO attention again focused on Burma, connecting its people to the internet will be an active priority. And it may find relative online freedom when it does.