Yeah, social media – it’s now very popular, especially Facebook and young people are very addicted to Facebook at that moment, but the Internet penetration is very low, because, you know, just only in a city dwellers can access to the Internet. For the other areas and the rural areas, they don’t have Internet access. This is one of the problems and the most important problem is the electricity. We don’t have 24-hour electricity. We don’t get 24-hour electricity. Without electricity, we don’t have any other information technology or everything.
But with city dwellers, young people are very actively – very interested to be in the social media. Facebook, Twitter is not very good because of the speed is very low. And also yet, my Triangle Women’s Support Group has a Facebook page. And we try to – this is just for a very limited people, not for all the ordinary people. If you’re trying to reach our news, we approach to the weekly journals in our country. There are many journals, hundreds of channels we call ‘weekly journals’. So there are hundreds of journals.
If we try to let our people know some of the activities or news, we make interviews with the journals and magazines. Magazine is monthly magazine in our country. The term we use is very different from yours. ‘Daily’ is a newspaper and ‘weekly’ is a journal and ‘monthly’ is a magazine. We call it like that. So – but still very few, although they know very well about how to use the social media, but most of the young people just only addicted to chatting and – ‘g-talk’ [referring to Google’s g-chat instant messenger].
They can’t use effectively the Internet website, how to learn or how to get the information of the other in different sections. They are just chatting and ‘g-talk’ – they use at that moment. So that’s why some of the young groups, who mainly are giving training and presentations on how to use social media effectively. Now, there are two more radios RFA, Radio Free Asia and Democratic Voice of Burma [DVB]. So we call that this BBC [British Broadcasting Corporation], VOA [Voice of America], RFA, DVB “our radios,” our big reliable news or like that.
Yeah, after 2008 Cyclone Nargis, even though they are not interested in politics, for example, farmers and other rural traders, villagers, they tried to listen to the radio because, you know, at that time, the news – where the news broadcast in these radios that there would be a big storm and to keep – to prepare for the storm or something like that [On May 2, 2008, Cyclone Nargis made landfall and caused widespread devastation in Burma. According to official figures, 84,500 people were killed and 53,800 went missing]. But the state owned radio never broadcast such news. There would be a big storm or something like that.
They restricted to broadcast this – this news. That’s why after Cyclone Nargis, most people rely on the radio. Every house has a radio, one only – one radio to listen to their radio weather news and political news and many other things. Now they are very in a leading role. And also VOA, BBC, RFA, DVB, interview – keep interviewing the NLD [the main Burmese opposition party, the National League for Democracy (NLD)] members and MPs [Members of Parliament] or we can – we can spread our news through the radio. So sometimes, you know, very funny that even though in our country without no – we don’t have information in time.
But after listening to the radio, we know that, oh, there some of the events happening in our country like that. So – because, you know, there is two times a day radio program broadcast. That’s when we can get all the news and updated information through the radio, NLD movement and other democratic forces movement, for example.
Khin Lay is a Burmese civil society and political activist. She was born in Yangon in 1971.
She pursued a career in education, hoping to be a university professor. That ambition changed after Aung San Suu Kyi, the leader of Burma’s democracy movement, inspired Khin Lay to take an active role in freeing her country. In 1995, Khin Lay joined Aung San Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy (NLD).
As a member of NLD, Khin Lay endured constant surveillance by the regime. In 2000, she was arrested by authorities for her involvement with the party. After five days of interrogation in which she was blindfolded and deprived of sleep, Khin Lay spent four months in Insein Prison, a facility notorious for its deplorable conditions and use of torture. She was released in 2001.
More recently, Khin Lay has focused on strengthening women’s rights and building a more robust civil society. She founded the Triangle Women Support Group, an organization dedicated to empowering Burmese women, developing their political and professional skills, as well as encouraging greater participation in public life. She believes that fostering a new generation of strong, female leaders is a key component to Burma’s democratization.
Burma, a Southeast Asian country with about 57 million people, is ruled by a military regime that seized power in 1962. Although the reformist National League for Democracy (NLD) won overwhelmingly in a 1990 election, the country’s military rulers ignored the results and arrested NLD leader Aung San Suu Kyi, who was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1991 “for her nonviolent struggle for democracy and human rights.” The military government held a referendum on a new constitution in 2008 and a parliamentary election in 2010, neither of which was regarded by international observers as free or fair, and both of which resulted in overwhelming majorities for pro-government positions and candidates. The military regime has committed widespread and systematic human rights violations, including extrajudicial killing, torture, rape, and denial of freedom of expression, association, assembly, and religion.
Throughout its existence, the regime has been at war with a number of Burma’s ethnic minority groups. Ethnic minority voters overwhelmingly supported the NLD in the 1990 election, and after the suppression of the democracy movement several of these groups continued or resumed armed resistance to the de facto government. Although the government signed cease-fire agreements with several of these groups ostensibly granting them autonomy within their respective regions, the Burmese military has used a range of brutal techniques, including the killing of civilians, forced labor, rape, and the destruction of homes, crops, and villages, in cease-fire zones as well as in areas where there is still armed resistance.
In 2007, as on several previous occasions, there were mass demonstrations throughout the country demanding freedom and democracy. The 2007 demonstrations were led by Buddhist monks and eventually became known as the “Saffron Revolution” after the color of the monks’ robes. The armed forces brutally suppressed these demonstrations—estimates of the number of protestors killed range from 31 to several thousand—and intensified popular dissatisfaction with the government by the killing, beating, and public humiliation of monks.
The nominally civilian government resulting from the 2010 election has been widely regarded as a façade for continuing military rule. However, in October 2011, the government released 206 of Burma’s estimated 2,000 prisoners of conscience. The next month, the government announced that it would soon release all remaining political prisoners. The NLD, which had declined to participate in the 2010 election, registered to participate in the next election and announced that Aung San Suu Kyi would be among the NLD candidates.
Although the military regime announced in 1989 that it had changed the English name of the country from Burma to “Myanmar,” the United States government and other international supporters of democracy in Burma have generally continued to call the country Burma because this is the name preferred by Aung San Suu Kyi and other democracy advocates who won the 1990 election.
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