10.12.2006
.
.
Editorial: Damming the flow of Information
_ Dr. Tayza
Some say that education is taboo for dictators.
Some claims that educated intelligentsia are thorn in the side of authoritarian governments.
Some believe that information is regarded as poison by totalitarian regimes.
Of course freedom of information will lead to informed people and informed people start to see their breached civil rights, and that’s the last thing military juntas want.
Since from the eras of arch dictators like Hitler, Sterling and Mao Zedong, people living under oppressive regimes are informed only on need to know basis. Dictators control all forms of media and they enjoy feeding people with propaganda only. They tell people how good they are, and what kind of great achievements they are bringing to the people. But at the same time they know that the rest of the world knows that they are corrupt despots. And they know themselves that the economy in their country is deteriorating under their mismanagement. They know that they have caused chaos in healthcare and education systems in the country. But they don’t want the people to know the truth.
Truth is toxic to tyrants. They don’t want to hear the truth. They just want to live in a dream world where they can make false believes that they are saving the country; they are saviour kings in their dream kingdoms.
They can’t let the people know the truth. They can’t let the outside world know the extent of atrocities they are committing inside the country. They can’t let the international community get the evidences of their breaches on human rights on their own people. So cutting off or damming up the free flow of truthful information becomes number one top priority for any dictatorship around the world.
For nineteenth century tyrants control on newspapers and the press had been quite enough to maintain their grip on flow of information and news.
But with the advent of radio broadcasting in the first half of the last century, dictators like Hitler found that they also needed to monopolize radio waves to spread their evil propaganda like Nazism, anti-Semitism etc. But the radio is double-edged sword because while it can be used by dictators to spread propaganda, it can also be used by democratic forces to broadcast truthful news to the people behind iron-curtains. All through Second World War and the cold war BBC and VOA channelled news and information via airwaves to people under oppressive regimes around the world.
So a media war for free flow of information has been raging on between oppressive forces and democratic forces since the invention of the radio.
And when television become widely available to ordinary people around the world, and when TV programs are transmitted via satellites, control on the flow of information a bit weakened. Even in a country like Burma, many a middle class people these days are secretly installing satellite receivers on roof-tops, without permission from authorities, to tune in to satellite broadcastings of BBS world service and CNN news etc. Even though authorities threaten illegal satellite receivers with hefty fines, people just relentlessly go on watching free and fair reporting of news on satellite TVs.
And now the internet is giving a new headache to authoritarian regimes around the world.
Even in Burma, new generation Burmese people are getting more and more addicted to internet in internet-cafes. Many affordable families are giving ridiculous rip-off prices to get broadband installed in their houses. People have to pay up to 3000US$ in Burma to get broadband installation. But they just eagerly pay up these rip-off prices to internet service provider companies owned by military generals’ families and cronies. People are paying such hyper-inflated prices to get internet access because they are hungry and thirsty for information. They know that information means knowledge, information means education, information means business opportunities and information is the key for everything.
Regime in Burma know that internet is a threat to their absolute control on the flow of information. But Burmese generals are traditionally ignorant and uneducated. Although Burmese army is bloated in the number of soldiers, they are very deficient in technology. So, apart from buying some firewall softwares to restricted Burmese people’s internet access, they cannot do much else. They even bought advanced software from an American company in an attempt to improve their capability to censor internet. But that American company is now under fire from international criticism for selling such unethical software to such a despotic regime, and they are having second thoughts and reconsidering their contract.
And people are finding ways and means to jump through regime's internet firewall. Although web emails like gmail, yahoo and hotmail are not allowed in Burma, many people have found out how they can bypass restrictions and get access to these webmails. People who cannot afford broadband installation at home are accessing internet in internet cafes or by using prepaid dial-up internet access cards.
And now comes the psiphon software, launched last week. It can be downloaded free from http://psiphon.ca . The best thing about it is that it needs to be downloaded by a person outside Burma, not by the user inside Burma. So for example if a person inside Burma wants unlimited internet access, all he or she needs is just to have a trusted friend outside the country who will download psiphon software to his computer, and then the two computers can be linked up via psiphon software and the person inside Burma can get access to unlimited unrestricted internet access.
A day will come when restrictions on internet become useless and information will flow freely all around the world.
Your Comments here_ please do not use symbols "(:/\<>!|{]@~#$)"
Request: If you can kindly volunteer to translate BURMA DIGEST English articles into Burmese, please let us know burmadigest@tayzathuria.org.uk .
.
Last week's English articles