The Internet: a weapon in the Burmese rebels' armoury

Posted by Nicholas | If the current situation in Burma reminds us of one thing, apart from what a despicable bunch of swine the current regime is, it is of how mind bogglingly useful in such times the internet is.  Foreign correspondents are not allowed into Burma at the best of times, let alone during periods of unrest.  One who had managed somehow to be in the country, a Japanese reporter, was shot dead in the street earlier this week. 

In 1988, during a similar attempt at a popular rebellion, the Burmese army shot down hundreds of civilians.  The world scarcely knew of it.  The events of 2007 are different. We have the internet.  We see film clips, some of very high quality, that Burmese people themselves have been able to take with camcorders and mobile phones, and post on the internet.  We are finding out what is happening thanks to blogs, e-mail and YouTube.
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The regime is fully aware of this, and they are trying to cut all links with the outside world.  Maybe they will succeed, but by now it is probably too late.  The rest of us know that something drastic, something perhaps very exciting, is happening in Burma. And we know because of the internet.

All of which points to one imperative: the internet must never be censored.  It must be kept free from all forms of interference. We hear voices from time to time calling for the policing of the internet. Censorship, in other words.  People meeting in closed committees to decide what you and I may read, see and listen to, in an attempt to guide the way we think.  Restricting what the net can do – just like the Burmese regime is attempting.   Sometimes people call for just a little bit of censorship,  governing only a few things that surely any reasonable person would not object to controlling.  But once you let in the infection of censorship it grows like a cancer, and is almost impossible to remove.  And censorship itself is far more obscene and destructive than anything it tries to control.  So we must put up with the spam, the porn, the websites of hate groups, and all the other objectionable aspects of the internet as the price we pay to keep it free from those who would, deliberately or unwittingly, use it to impose thought control on us all. A truly free internet is itself an instrument of freedom.

Comments

[nononsense girl]

I agree that the internet must be always used as a tool (instrument) of freedom. :)

That's a great article Nicholas!