Waiting To Be Wired
Although all but banned in Myanmar, the Internet whips up a tempest in a tea shop
By GINA CHON
Asiaweek-12-july-01
Aung Soe Min compares the first time he accessed the Internet to being drunk. The 31-year-old Burmese writer and filmmaker, able to log on outside his home country while traveling in Southeast Asia, would bounce from one website to the next for up to seven hours, mesmerized by the abundant information. "My friends started calling me Mr. Internet," says Aung. "I spent all my money and time at the cyber cafés."
It's hard to fathom anyone getting worked up about the Web these days. But in Myanmar, the country's military regime heavily censors all media and severely restricts Internet access. Most citizens have never seen a website nor touched a computer. Yet their I.T. appetite runs strong. Aung's bout with Netoxia made him a popular conversational companion at the Wuthering Heights tea shop in Yangon, where local intellectuals longing to join the digital age devour every scrap of information that can help fill in their imperfect map of cyberspace.
With second-hand knowledge gleaned from pirated copies of books on computer programming, artists, authors, journalists and academics gather in bookstores and tea shops to debate philosophy, economics and the concept of instant messaging. "We are not quite sure what the Internet is for," says Aung. "But we are convinced it is important."
Important because information is power. For ordinary Burmese, information is in short supply. Nay Htut, the 28-year-old editor of the New Myanmar Weekly, was allowed last month to post his newspaper on the Web for the first time. But he can't read it online because he does not have surfing privileges. Nay compares the blossoming of Net fever in Yangon to "a small flower in the desert, where the sun is too powerful."
Adds a local cartoonist: "Ten years ago, the army only had guns. Now they have the Internet. We do not. Now they know everything."
That sense of being cut off from the information revolution is a common tea-shop theme. But the government, keen to sprout an I.T. sector as the country's economy decays, is easing restrictions. More than 600 citizens are now allowed e-mail accounts, and computer courses are standard in most schools. Last November, the government set up a task force to study e-commerce. A high-tech center has been established at Yangon University.
To Aung and his colleagues, the most heartening development may be the recent opening of two Yangon Internet cafés through a government/private sector joint venture. Only members who pay a $500 annual fee can use the facilities to surf approved sites. The cost, which includes a $65 monthly charge for 30 hours of use, means access is mainly reserved for the elite.
Officials say the Net, like booze, is too hazardous for unlimited availability. "Opening up is very easy," says government spokesman Lt. Col. Hia Min. "But once there's a serious negative effect, how do we remedy it? Many friends from [the Association of South East Asian Nations] have told us to be careful and not do it too quickly."
Despite the virtual blackout, "the intellectual pattern of an Internet society is already formed," says Aung. "It is based on second-hand books and caffeinated conversations, instead of electronics." Myanmar will have to wait before citizens can get wired on more than tea.