Committee to Protect Bloggers » Cbox

Burmese Bloggers Go Dark, Pt. 3

Curt — Fri, 05 Oct 2007 16:54:06 +0000

I spoke with Seth Mydans, a reporter for the New York Times who’s been covering Burma. When he looked at Niknayman’s Cbox account, he noted that a great deal of the material posted in the last days indicated access to foreign media, which was unlikely (though not impossible) from inside the country. Even allowing for the fact that there are one or two hundred people accessing the site at any one time (and some of those, possibly the majority, no doubt outside Burma), there were enough of what looked like eyewitness postings to convince me some of them were done inside the country.

I then spoke with Preetam Rai , a blogger in SE Asia and contributor to Global Voices. Here’s his two cents.

From what I have heard, Myanmar has become like a intranet, people are still able to access to internally hosted sites but are not able to go outside. I am sure there is some outside access available but maybe limited to government officials and international companies. I have noticed that bloggers inside Myanmar who used to post non-political (There were some fashion, tech and korean tv drama themed blogs) content have also gone silent.

I thought that nik guy was outside Myanmar and he was collating information from all over.

What is happening though is that Burmese outside are able to call people inside and get some info. Some Myanmar bloggers are posting this information. However it is also getting harder to verify stuff. I think even if there were bloggers inside Myanmar they would not go near any cybercafe to report stuff about the protests.

My thought was that perhaps if not posting directly, people inside the country were texting to others who could post for them.

Well, at this point, I just don’t know what to think, but thought I should let you all know what I’ve discovered, even if it is, at this point, only suspicions. If anyone has any clarifying information, do please let us know. And thanks to all of you who took part in Free Burma day yesterday.

Live News from Burma’s Blogger

Curt — Tue, 02 Oct 2007 20:19:34 +0000

At the bottom of the central sidebar is Niknayman’s cbox, code courtesy Marshall. Grab the code on his ReadWriteWeb post and let’s get it viral.

List of Arrested in Burma

Curt — Tue, 02 Oct 2007 03:24:17 +0000

Niknayman has posted a link to the list of 344 people arrested in Burma so far.

Duncan has posted an HTML version of this list of arrested Burmese on his site. Thanks, Dylan.

Burmese Bloggers Go Dark

Curt — Wed, 26 Sep 2007 15:48:31 +0000

According to Australia’s The Age newspaper, the blog of Burmese blogger, Moezack, has gone dark. Moezack’s photos and posts were used extensively by the news media as the protests heated up.

The blog of another (exile) Burmese blogger, KoHtike, has also gone dark. (Update: That is, has been blocked.) The Justice and Injustice blog is still up.

The Tinhorns are definitely not neglecting the blogosphere.

Update: Additional blogs have also allegedly been blocked, including Niknayman and Sone Se Yar. Can anyone verify this? They don’t seem to have been erased, as they are visible from the U.S.

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