Myanmar: Internet Blocked

The follwing post is from a Burmese blogger who wishes to remain anonymous.

There have been massive support from Myanmar bloggers for the current protest activities, and the whole Myanmar blogosphere is overwhelmed with news and photos. Because of that, Myanmar Junta got chickened out and banned the political blogs, almost immediately followed by banning the whole blogger domain hence all other Myanmar blogs. A few bloggers tried to bypass proxy and blog using email-to-blog techniques.

To make the matter worse, BaganNet, Myanmar main ISP has been shut down by so-called “maintenance reasons” and most of the telecommunication services have been cut off or tapped. Information flow out of the country has been strictly monitored and even the amateur photographers are warned to be very careful as the Junta is hunting down the sources.

Numbers of blog posts have been reduced tremendously these days; nevertheless it’s very encouraging to see that some freedom bloggers are still in contact with the outside world and are working their best to keep the world up-to-date with latest Myanmar news.

Among them Niknayman excelled in the usage of CBox (blog comment box) facility to report live news of Burma activities. http://niknayman.cbox.ws/ is been viewed by thousands of visitors 24/7 and is one of the main source of news for overseas Myanmar. Usefulness and popularity of his CBox is growing rapidly and some of them created a clone English version CBox http://burmanews.cbox.ws/ for internationalization.

Today entries include:
Ancient Ghost reported a blackout in Yangon.

Internet cafes were closed down. Both MPT ISP and Myanmar Teleport ISP cut down internet access in Yangon and Mandalay since this morning. The Junta try to prevent more videos, photographs and information about their violent crackdown getting out. I got a news from my friends that last night some militray guys searched office computers from Traders and Sakura Tower building. Most of the downtown movement photos were took from office rooms of those high buildings. GSM phone lines and some land lines were also cut out and very diffficult to contact even in local. GSM short message sending service is not working also. Burma is blacked out now!

Dr. Lun Swe‘s blog is another great source for latest photos and currently he blogged the photos of the prayer activities organized by some religious groups at Thai-Myanmar border.

Blogger Yan Aung proposes the Media Campaign. His aim is to free Burma within a year and his plans are:

  • To help Myanmar bloggers to overcome with blogspot.com restriction,
  • To utalize WordPress platform for future blogging,
  • To let the world know about blood shed in Myanmar via Youtube videos,
  • To distribute news photos to Major publishing agencies such as New York Times, Asahi Shinbon, Washington etc to get listed.

He's also trying to organize funding facilities for the protesters and is requesting multi-lingual translators for translation and effective communication with the international media.

Refugees Within blogs about a way to help the protesters in Burma.

A friend of mine has helped put an online donation mechanism together to get money to help support the protesters in Burma. There are already casualties and the medical services are not prepared to meet what is feared. I gave $30 here in Thailand and I trust the people behind this. Please think about doing the same: http://madnomad.com/ysb/

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