Technology and protest in Myanmar

BY DHEERA SUJAN

05-12-2008

An ordinary telephone SIM card costs just two US dollars in Bangkok. In Myanmar, less than an hour away by plane, it costs 1800 US dollars. This in a country where a surgeon is lucky to take home 100 US dollars a month.

et there are more mobile phones in the towns and cities of this closed country than its army led government would like. And mobile phones were key instruments in the organisation and news dissemination of last September's pro democracy protests led by monks - illustrating exactly why the leading Junta fear the access to the outside world that technology offers.

The September protests were caught by the countless mobile phones of ordinary people or shot at great risk by the hidden video cameras of undercover reporters and sent out of the country within minutes through the internet. Smuggled video tapes found their way to mainstream media around the world.

Mobile video footage of a Japanese journalist shot at close range

Scenes of violence shown on Al-Jazeera

Unprecedented coverage

For a few days Burmese monks led civilian protesters on the streets of Yangon, and the international community watched, electrified by the unprecedented images of a country that had remained behind its own bamboo curtain for years. At first, the Myanmar government was paralysed with indecision. Then it did what most feared it would - it called in the troops.

And still the cameras rolled, still the images were loaded onto YouTube. A Japanese cameraman, shot at point blank range by a soldier, troops shooting into crowds of civilians, police beating monks with iron bars, and dragging off peaceful demonstrators holding banners.

Having their story told

The world was watching Myanmar for the first time in decades and the Burmese people, forcibly isolated for so long, were exultantly aware that they were not forgotten. "It's almost an existential desire for the Burmese to have their story told," says one journalist who has written and reported from the country for more than 20 years. She was there during the protests last year, and she was there when the retribution came.

Just a few weeks ago, the government of Myanmar apprehended leaders of the protests, monks, journalists, and bloggers and sentenced them to up to 65 years in prison. The bloggers were accused of violating the Electronics Act which regulates electronic communications.

The sentences are breathtakingly harsh, and they send a clear message from the government - that it will brook no opposition from within during the run-up to the elections planned for 2010. But there is also a hidden message in the single-minded way people who sent images of human rights violations out of the country have been hunted down: that the government too can use technology to its own benefit. People have been traced through their email and mobile phones and internet servers have been examined for "improper use". 

Cat and mouse

The government has even mined the very same images of the violent put-down of the demonstrators to locate the shops, doorways and homes where people may have taken the footage and then made group arrests to find the photographers.

But as the journalist says, "it's a cat and mouse game. The government blocks the technology in one way and people find alternatives to go around it. There are proxy servers springing up all the time...it won't stop. The people will always find a way of making their voice heard. It's always been that way in Burma."

Possibility of Tsunami in Northern Bay of Bengal

MELBOURNE: Millions of people living around the northern Bay of Bengal face the threat of a giant tsunami as devastating as the one in 2004, an Australian scientist has claimed.

There has been concern about the likelihood of another large earthquake off central Sumatra, just east of where the 2004 temblor struck triggering the Indian Ocean tsunami almost three years ago.

However, Phil Cummins, a senior seismologist at Geoscience Australia, has now found "compelling evidence" of a potential tsunami risk in the northern Bay of Bengal, particularly along the coasts of Burma and Bangladesh.

More than 60 million people lived within 10 metres of sea level at the bay's northern tip, he said, and heavily populated towns such as Chittagong, Dhaka and Kolkata could also be affected by such an event.

His findings, published in Nature today , are based on a review of geological data, combined with a study of precise measurements of movements in the Earth's surface.

This work suggested that the boundary between tectonic plates near the Burmese coast was much more active than previously thought.

The movements of the plates were consistent with a so-called "locked-thrust" fault, the kind needed to generate tsunamis, but may have been masked by a 20-kilometre thick layer of sediment known as the Bengal Fan.

Cummins said it may be more than 200 years before the next giant earthquake strikes. And while smaller events could occur earlier, "the risk of a major tsunami in the northern Bay of Bengal should be taken seriously".

He warned against panic or the introduction of any "drastic mitigation measures", but hoped his study would lead to further research into the potential risk.(PTI)

My note: Don't panic about Tsunami or Earth Quake..there is no predicting method invented yet.