Few images capture the ugliness of Myanmar’s recent military crackdown quite like the photos of a Buddhist monk’s mud-covered corpse displayed in a slide show on the Web site of the Democratic Voice of Burma, a Burmese advocacy group based in Norway. The outraged messages posted in response show the Web’s power to connect supporters around the world with the long-suffering citizens of an isolated and repressed country.Unfortunately, practically no one in Myanmar will see the site. That’s because the military junta’s squelching of protests extends deep into cyberspace: During the violence that killed dozens of protestors in recent weeks, Myanmar’s Internet was cut off from the outside world. In its aftermath, Burmese Web users have only three or four hours of access a day, according to a spokesman at Reporters Without Borders. Even then, government censors block most Web sites, sift through e-mails, and even take frequent screen shots of users’ computers in cyber-cafés.To read this story in full in Forbes, click here.
Broadband Big Brothers – online censorship around the world
Few images capture the ugliness of Myanmar’s recent military crackdown quite like the photos of a Buddhist monk’s mud-covered corpse displayed in a slide show on the Web site of the Democratic Voice of Burma, a Burmese advocacy group based in Norway. The outraged messages posted in response show the Web’s power to connect supporters around the world with the long-suffering citizens of an isolated and repressed country.