•    HOME   
•    NEWS   
•    BUSINESS   
•    INTERNATIONAL   
•    TECH   
•    SPORTS   
•    LIFE & TIMES   
•    OPINION   
•    MY JAKARTA   
•    BLOGS   
•    EYEWITNESS   

Rangoon. One of Burma’s self-described “pioneer bloggers” proudly opens his popular Web site — officially banned by the military rulers — and scrolls to his updates on the approaching election.

Tin San has been carefully researching the candidates running in Burma’s first polls in two decades, and for his next post he is busy reading up on the electoral regulations.

“Most people in Burma are not familiar with voting. We need to have resources and information to vote how we like,” says the 30-year-old. Like all those in the country under the age of 38, he has never voted before.

The upcoming Nov. 7 election has been widely criticized by activists and the West as a sham orchestrated by the ruling generals to shore up their rule. Some favor a boycott by voters, many of whom are disillusioned with the process.

But Tin San is among a group of optimists who advocate participation and online debate about the polls, despite some of the world’s most repressive Internet controls.

“I have quite a lot of influence on my readers so I want them just to think about the information,” he says.

Judging by the busy cyber cafes across Rangoon, the Internet offers a way to tap the city’s youth, despite slow connections, frequent power outages and huge risks over online activity that the regime deems subversive.

Reporters Without Borders describes Burma’s legislation on Internet use, the Electronic Act, as “one of the most liberticidal laws in the world”, with dissident users facing lengthy prison terms.

Tin San, who has about 2,000 Facebook friends and thousands more blog followers, says he holds informal gatherings across Rangoon to discuss the Internet’s uses — and how to dodge the junta’s restrictions.

“Political Web sites are banned but you can still read them, for example through Google Reader,” is one of his tips. He also offers advice about privacy settings on social networking sites.

During the “Saffron Revolution” monk-led protests in 2007, Burma’s citizens used the Web to leak extensive accounts and video to the outside world, sparking a total Internet ban by the iron-fisted regime.

“I think the government is quite afraid of blogs and bloggers,” says Tin San, one of nearly 1,500 members of the online Burma Blogger Society.

Controls are expected to be tightened again during the election, but for now many are fearlessly talking politics online while they still can.

Win Oo, 28, of Rangoon, says a friend recently sent him a cartoon of the junta chief Than Shwe looking like a clown. Prominent blogger Nay Phone Latt was jailed in 2008 for 20 years for allegedly storing such an image, among other offences.

“If I want to look at things like that, I sit in the corner of the Internet cafe, not in the middle, because we never know about the other users or the owner,” says Win Oo, who also intends to vote this year.

Few political parties have taken their campaigns online. Two that have attempted it — the Burma Democracy Congress party and the Peace and Diversity Party — have had their Web sites banned.

Even if their sites were allowed, the Web’s reach outside the major cities of Rangoon and Mandalay is severely limited.

Only one of every 455 of Burma’s inhabitants used the Internet users in 2009, based on statistics from the International Telecommunication Union, a United Nations agency in Geneva.

About two thirds of the population, estimated at 50 million, lives in the countryside and have limited access to information.

Web-savvy city dwellers still hope their online activity, however restricted, will help to spread political awareness across the country.

“The Internet can help to change the outcome of an election, maybe not this one but the next,” says a 26-year-old student of Rangoon-based civil society group Burma Egress, which has promoted participation in the polls.


Agence France-Presse