They Cut the Internet First

In late September 2007, Buddhist monks led the largest public demonstrations Burma had seen in twenty years—hundreds of thousands of people in the streets, a direct challenge to the military junta that had ruled by fear and economic strangulation since the late 1980s. The junta’s answer was efficient: cut the internet, then cut the protesters.

Ko Htike had been running a blog documenting the crackdown, relaying images and accounts from inside the country through whatever channels remained open. When the connection went dark, his dispatch read like a transmission from just before impact: I sadly announce that the Burmese military junta has cut off the internet connection throughout the country. I will continue to live with the motto that if there is a will there is a way. Beneath it, from someone actually inside Yangon: it is really bad in YGN, pls can someone do something for our country—now inside YGN it has been look like War Zone, i even heard shooting over the phone, it is over 50 shots, right now, but people are not giving up to protest and more and more people coming out to street. Tear gas had been fired into a primary school.

There’s a specific logic to that sequence: silence the record, then do what you didn’t want recorded. If no one can see it, it didn’t happen. The monks were in the streets. The cameras had been switched off. And still the words kept moving—through phone calls, through whatever back channels remained—because some people are determined enough to keep speaking regardless.

I don’t have anything useful to add. I just wanted to put this here, where it would stay.