Junta goes to war with web

Bloggers stay ahead of censors

Angered and embarrassed by a sustained blogging campaign by its critics, Burma’s military regime is hitting back with the only weapons it knows—intimidation and crude attempts to sabotage the offending websites, writes Edward Loxton for The First Post.

The owner of three Rangoon internet cafés has been arrested and his premises closed down, while others have been warned they also face closure if their customers attempt to log onto sites carrying anti-regime blogs. The owner of the three cafes was identified as Nay Myo Latt. A member of the youth wing of the opposition National League for Democracy, he was the author of a popular blog that carried satirical swipes at the regime.

In a bid to beat the bloggers at their own game, regime officials with IT knowledge are breaking into sites and depositing crude messages and pornography on them. Attempts to block sites altogether are defeated by ingenious bloggers, who lead the regime censors on a merry chase across the web, popping up again as soon as their sites are sabotaged or suppressed.

“We’ve taken the struggle off the streets and into cyberspace,” said one young blogger, a Rangoon technology student. “It’s not going to bring down the regime, but it’s causing the generals a lot of embarrassment.”

Regime supremo Than Shwe is the favourite target of the bloggers, one of whom has bombarded the internet with doctored photographs of the elderly general inspecting his troops with no trousers on and his underpants around his knees, or cruising the parade ground in the back of a hearse. The pictures are circulating the tea shops of Rangoon and other cities. “You can even find workers in government offices chortling over them,” said a trade ministry clerk.

FIRST POSTED JANUARY 30, 2008