Myanmar / Burma: Offline

Myanmar/Burma, a member of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) cut public access to the Internet recently. Today, I think. A military junta has been running Myanmar/Burma for lately.

"Apathetic Lemming of the North" isn't political. It's about blogs, bloggers, the blogosphere, and parts of the Web that interest me.

But when a country's leadership cuts public access to the Internet, I get interested.

The ruling junta in Myanmar/Burma wants people to call their holding "Myanmar," but I'll be different, and call it "Burma." At least, until the people there want to re-name it. It's their country, after all.

Back to Burma. Other ASEAN members "expressed 'revulsion' and told the junta 'to exercise utmost restraint and seek a political solution.' Officials in neighboring Thailand said airplanes were on standby to evacuate ASEAN nationals in case the condition deteriorated."

ASEAN's goal is to

1. Accelerate economic growth, social progress and cultural development in the region
2. Promote regional peace and stability through abiding respect for justice and the rule of law....

That could explain their strongly-worded statement. Cutting people off from the Internet isn't the best way to promote growth and social progress. It's bad for business, too.

The Myanmar/Burma situation isn't too good right now. This week, so far, the junta has killed between 10 and 200 people, including Kenji Nagai, a Japanese journalist, and occupied Buddhist monasteries.

I try to be tolerant of other cultures' ways of doing things, but this behavior seems to be over the top.

Two posts here yesterday dealt with Burma:

• "Burma or Myanmar, the Place Needs Help,"
  (September 27, 2007)
• "There's Trouble All Over, but Darfur and Burma/Myanmar Stand out,"
  (September 27, 2007)

I hope the people I linked to in those are still online. And alive.

Meanwhile, today's headlines about Myanmar/Burma don't look good.

• "Myanmar crackdown brings condemnation" (Kansas City Star)
• "Myanmar Military Cuts Internet Access, Occupies Monasteries" (FOXNews.com)

Back to something I said before in this post. "Apathetic Lemming of the North" isn't political. But, when a military junta cuts Internet access to its subjects, I get interested.