RAND_MR1382

years and fines of up to $5,000 for anyone who owns an unregistered modem or fax
machine. 19
Still, information seeped in and out. Despite SLORC’s stiff controls, exile groups along
Burma’s borders with Thailand and India began feeding news—which had first been
transmitted on the Internet—back into Burma on computer diskettes or simple, twosided
newsletters. (Rank-and-file SLORC soldiers have been among the customers.) The
BBC and the Democratic Voice of Burma, a Burmese-language radio station operating in
Norway, broadcast news picked up via the Internet into Burma. 20 Burmese
prodemocracy activists use the Internet to publicize news from within Burma that is
taken out of the country in other ways and for safe (encrypted) communications
between various prodemocracy groups or between them and supporters in the United
States and elsewhere. In terms of cost, rapidity, and ease of use, the Internet is a
significant advantage over previous technologies for this purpose. 21 These efforts and
their effects inside Burma will be discussed in more detail later.
In 1994 and 1995, a new front was opened in the struggle for political change in
Burma, as students and expatriates in the United States began to organize the Free
Burma campaign, whose central goals included pressuring American and European
companies to cease doing business with SLORC. The Internet was again the most
frequent communication medium of choice for organizing and exchanging information.
By this time, powerful new Internet tools were available, especially the web and
associated technologies that make it possible to view and share audio, video, and
graphics. With the necessary computer hardware and software and a click of a mouse,
interested parties and, more particularly, activists anywhere in the world could listen to
a speech by Aung San Suu Kyi; transmit Free Burma campaign materials, such as posters
and flyers; or look through a virtual keyhole into Burma itself. Within days of the
December 1996 student demonstrations—the largest in Rangoon since 1988—images of
them, taken from a private videocamera that surreptitiously recorded the events, were
available on the Internet. 22 Dozens of web pages now exist covering every imaginable
facet of Burma.
SLORC has responded by paying an American company to set up its own web site,
www.myanmar.com. The site, which was registered in Laurel, Maryland, 23 features
pictures of the country and information about tourism, business, and development—no
politics whatsoever. SLORC almost certainly monitors the public Internet discussion
dominated by prodemocracy activists. A known SLORC representative, who uses the
electronic mail address , regularly transmits the regime’s
official statements on BurmaNet and the soc.culture.burma newsgroup. Others who are
believed to be representatives of, or at least sympathetic to, the regime also participate
in the debate. 24
In the summer of 1997, SLORC and its representatives appeared to have begun a more