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NEWS - On-line activists step up fi
April 29, 1998
FEATURE / PASSING ON THE WORD
On-line activists step up fight
Dissidence is no longer a
rag-tag endeavour. Today's
opponents of autocratic
regimes are making good
use of Cyberspace.
PETER ENG
Bangkok
Once cornered in malarial jungles, dark
prisons and lonely exile, Southeast Asian
dissidents armed with computers and
modems are winning skirmishes as they
marshal the border-breaching Internet
against autocratic regimes.
Government clampdowns on the
mainstream media can no longer silence
critics: news and vitriol zipping in via
Cyberspace are adding fuel to the social
unrest that has buffeted the region in
recent months.
After having rattled Burma's military
government, activists are using the World
Wide Web and electronic mail against
Indonesia's President Suharto,
Cambodia's Hun Sen, and the rulers of
Vietnam, one of the world's last
communist regimes.
They have raised the issues higher on the
international agenda and forced countries
to give greater weight to human rights
and democracy concerns when dealing
with these governments. It no longer
makes any difference that the activists are
scattered worldwide.
"Before, Burmese expatriates remained
isolated from one another," said Zarni, a
leading Burmese activist. "The Internet
has not only enabled us to share
information, advise one another and
coordinate action, but also has been a
shot in the arm psychologically. No
feeling is more powerful than to know that
you are not alone in your fight for
justice."
With anti-government street protests
rocking Indonesia, opposition parties,
students, journalists, and
non-government groups have been busy
posting news and spreading their views
on the most important Indonesia-related
list, INDONESIA-L
(http://www.indopubs.com/archives).They
include the People's Democratic Party,
which fled underground after the
government blamed it for riots last year
and arrested its main leaders.
Up through the formation of Mr Suharto's
new cabinet in mid-March, an average of
130,000 people a day were reading
INDONESIA-L, compared with a previous
high of 100,000, said John MacDougall,
who maintains the list from the United
States. The number of Indonesian
readers inside Indonesia has been
growing vastly, he said.
"Posters [to the list] often compare
Indonesia to the Titanic: Suharto is taking
Indonesia down with him," said Mr
MacDougall.
"Posters are more fearful than ever," he
said. "That's understandable, given some
of the new themes of the posters, such as
very explicit, thorough criticism of Suharto
and his family, the rejection of the
legitimacy of Suharto's re-election as
president, and the open mockery of
Vice-President Habibie and the new
cabinet. There are very few
pro-government posters anymore.
Emotions and worries for country, families
and selves are running very high.
"Many INDONESIA-L postings get printed
out, reproduced and distributed in large
quantities, bringing the reach of the Net
far beyond the middle class elite which
can afford computers. Postings get read
by Indonesian ministers, military officers
and diplomats. Some rely on it for 'inside'
information."
Internet lists maintained inside Indonesia
have proliferated, along with new on-line
magazines with names like X-Pos.
Dissident voices travel nationwide since
Internet service providers now exist in
every province in Indonesia, including
insurgency-plagued East Timor and Irian
Jaya.
In Cambodia, the first provider started up
only last year, a welcome development for
dissidents since Hun Sen's formerly
communist party now controls all
broadcast media, and has threatened the
few opposition newspapers.
Activists rushed on-line after Hun Sen
ousted his co-prime minister, Prince
Norodom Ranariddh, in a bloody coup
last July. While Hun Sen's army
overpowers the resistance's few troops,
many resistance supporters are
western-educated and versed in the new
technology.
After fleeing abroad, the opposition
politicians kept their voices heard,
on-line.
Activists organised worldwide
demonstrations against Hun Sen. Now,
with most of the politicians back in Phnom
Penh, the activists are maintaining
pressure on Hun Sen to hold a free and
fair election in July.
Much of the campaign rallies around top
dissident Sam Rainsy. The home page of
a US branch of his party
(http://www.kreative.net/knp)reports on
the struggle of the "Cambodian People Vs
Saddam HunSen".
It casts fire-and-brimstone vitriol at Hun
Sen, also termed "Pol Pot Number Two",
and contains graphic photographs of
people murdered by his security forces.
On-line Cambodians in France, Australia
and Thailand also spread Sam Rainsy's
message, and now people inside
Cambodia have joined in.
Through the Internet, Sam Rainsy
supporters also have publicised the
demonstrations in Phnom Penh by
thousands of unionised garment workers
who say they are being abused by factory
owners with the tacit support of Hun
Sen's party.
In Vietnam, the government wavered for
many months before finally allowing the
first Internet service providers to start up
last December. It worried about
Vietnamese exiles fomenting political
instability, especially as people inside the
country have stepped up the challenge to
the Communist Party over the past year.
Just as other Internet activists have
turned Burma into "the South Africa of the
1990s", the exiles are trying to turn
Vietnam into another Eastern Europe.
When prominent figures in Vietnam
including retired Gen Tran Do and
mathematician Phan Dinh Dieu wrote
recently to the party urging it to pursue
democratic reforms, the exile groups
triumphantly put the full texts on-line.
When thousands of villagers in Thai Binh
province demonstrated against corruption
by officials, Vietnamese state-controlled
media stayed silent for months. But
on-line activists quickly broadcast detailed
accounts that were spiced with mockery
of the media's silence.
Many of these accounts were posted by
Vietnam Insight
(http://www.vinsight.org/),a US-based
group sponsored by the National United
Front for the Liberation of Vietnam, which
in turn was founded by a former admiral
of the South Vietnam government that the
communists defeated in 1975.
"Our service reaches and is sought by
Hanoi's officials and offices both at home
and abroad," said Vietnam Insight's
editor, Mrs Chan Tran. "Among many of
them, we believe, are dissident members
who want to reach out. People in Vietnam
download en masse the information on
our web pages. People in Vietnam e-mail
and ask us questions. We also reach
Vietnamese students sent abroad by the
Hanoi regime."
In moments of doubt, activists can draw
reassurance from the campaign against
the generals of Burma, who have been
blamed for widespread human rights
abuses. In just a couple of years, Internet
activists have turned an obscure,
backwater conflict into an international
issue and helped make Rangoon one of
the world's most vilified regimes.
By using the Internet to rally around
pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi
and to organise worldwide protests and
consumer boycotts, the activists have
twisted the arms of many institutions
dealing with Burma.
Last year, the United States and Canada
imposed economic sanctions on Burma.
Many US local governments have
restricted business with companies that
invest in Burma. Leading US companies
including PepsiCo and Apple Computer
have pulled out of the country, as have
European giants including Heineken and
Carlsberg.
The spearhead is the Free Burma
Coalition (http://www.freeburma.org); now
one of the world's largest on-line human
rights campaigns, it groups activists at
over 100 educational institutions in North
America and people in 26 other countries.
The coalition was founded in 1995 by
Zarni, a Burmese activist who is studying
at an American university, and it grew
quickly.
"People downloaded campaign posters
and ready-made flyers from the site," said
Zarni. "The site also served as a 24-hour
recruiting centre. During the past three
years, there has not been a single day
when no one subscribed to the Free
Burma Coalition listserve or offered to
help with the campaign."
In Burma, the unauthorised possession of
a computer with networking capability is a
crime punishable by seven to 15 years
imprisonment. But the government itself is
starting to use the Internet to fight back
at
its critics on the Internet.
Rangoon frequently dials up the
Burmanet news mailing list that was
created by anti-Rangoon activists. Hiding
behind pen names and using cryptic,
formalistic language, officials including
diplomats at Burma's embassy in
Washington post attacks on their critics
along with articles from the Burmese state
media glorifying the military. Then there's
the official Myanmar Home Page
(http://www.myanmar.com),which
describes a "Goldenland" of tourist
attractions and business opportunities.
Last December, Hun Sen's Cambodian
People's Party launched a home page
(http://www.cpp.com.khor via
http://www.cppusa.net)which aims, as it
says, "to refute liberalism and its allies
in
the media using the facts of the issues
rather than deception".
The site contains lengthy attempts to
justify the coup, and in an attempt to
soften Hun Sen's image, offers
photographs of him sitting on a mat with
elderly villagers, and happily clutching a
giggling school girl.
The Cyberspace struggle is set to
expand. Governments battered by the
regional economic turmoil feel they have
little choice but to count on information
technology to drive economic growth in
the next century.
The number of Internet users in Asia will
rise by 63 percent during the 1995 to
2001 period, says a research firm, the
International Data Corp Asia-Pacific.
Malaysia has deferred other
mega-projects to save money, but says it
still will invest US$10 billion (400 billion
baht) into the Multimedia Super Corridor
for high-technology industries.
To lure the multinationals, the
government has guaranteed uncensored
Internet access. In a country where the
authorities have emasculated the
traditional media, the Internet may give a
new weapon to those opposed to Prime
Minister Mahathir Mohamad.
* Peter Eng has covered Southeast
Asia since the mid-1980s