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On-line activists step up fight



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

Bangkok Post
April 29, 1998

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