Committee to Protect Bloggers » Niknayman

Clarification Regarding List of Arrested Burmese

Curt — Wed, 18 Jun 2008 23:07:49 +0000

Given the press coverage of the WIA Report, which included reference to a list of Burmese arrestees we posted a link to, I thought some clarification would be useful. Neither the source of the report, Burmese blogger Niknayman, nor the CPB, nor Duncan, the guy who formatted the list we used, have ever maintained that all 344 of the detainees on this list were bloggers. I think it’s pretty reasonable to assume a number are, but no, not 344 arrested bloggers, 344 arrested Burmese, some of whom may have been bloggers.

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.

The Cult of the Citizen

Curt — Sat, 29 Sep 2007 13:06:43 +0000

Burma has become an object lesson for the power of blogging and, sadly, for the vulnerability of bloggers to the actions of a determined government. Protests began in August and, due to the lack of both independent domestic press and the presence of many international journalists, bloggers did the heavy-lifting in getting the news out.

Burma-based bloggers followed every turn of news in the streets and provided traditional news organizations with information and media they would not otherwise have had.

When the crackdown began last week, and those bloggers’ access was blocked, like Niknayman , or hijacked and deleted, like Sone Se Yar, external Burmese news sites such as Mizzima and Irrawaddy, as well as exile bloggers like Ko-Htike continued to post news and photos gotten from citizens inside via email, cell phone calls and text messages.

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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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