Posted: October 14

Communication and freedom

(Rome) Two weeks ago Myanmar (Burma) was in the news every day. Now other stories have taken the limelight, but the conflict still has not been resolved. There are many compelling aspects of the story about Buddhist monks daring to confront armed soldiers. What intrigued me is the power of a cell phone as a weapon against oppression.

Myanmar has long been a country that controlled communication, and when the Buddhist monks started their protests, the government countered by clamping down even tighter on journalists and isolating Burma from the world’s gaze. The military leaders did not count on the ingenuity and courage of ordinary people who used the video camera features built into modern cell phones to capture gripping scenes of soldiers beating monks and attacking protesters. The images were frequently off-centered and shaky, but very powerful. And they slipped through the net of silence that covered the country. Eventually the government shut down even those avenues of communication, but not before the world saw first-hand what was happening. Clearly, communication has become a political issue. A repressive regime that cannot control or suppress it suffers in public opinion when people all over the world know what is happening even in distant corners. Some editorials commented that even the eventual internet silence from Myanmar condemned the military.

Halfway around the world, freedom of expression suffered a different kind of attack. Craig Murray, a former Uzbekistan ambassador from Great Britain, has been writing a blog to criticize Alisher Usmanov, an Usbekistan billionaire who really, really disliked the harsh words that Murray wrote about him. Usmanov’s lawyers threatened the company that hosted Murray’s blogs with an lawsuit claiming that Murray’s comments were misleading and damaging. Great Britain has libel laws that made the threat apparently credible and led the internet service provider to shut down the whole server that hosted not just Murray but a number of other web sites. A Dutch company has now taken on Murray’s blog because the company is positioning itself as a virtual haven free from constraints of governmental control. Murray is very outspoken and caustic, but his blog falls within normal bounds of political commentary. Certainly I have read much harsher comments in blogs commenting on Church politics.

One man’s blog certainly doesn’t match the significance of large numbers of brave monks who faced beatings, arrest and death. Both cases did make me think about freedom of speech and its importance in our world where news can be a real threat to repressive regimes. Usually I am more worried about equipment working and the internet connection being fast enough. There are more basic concerns, though, and very real ones.