NY Times: Burmese Government Clamps Down on Internet

Burmese bloggers are now reporting that they are running into significant hurdles to getting the word out on the government’s crackdown.

“Burma is blacked out now!,” one blogger announced from Yangon, the country’s main city. More details from the post:

Internet cafes were closed down. Both MPT ISP and Myanmar Teleport ISP cut down internet access in Yangon and Mandalay since this morning. The Junta try to prevent more videos, photographs and information about their violent crackdown getting out. I got a news from my friends that last night some militray guys searched office computers from Traders and Sakura Tower building. Most of the downtown movement photos were took from office rooms of those high buildings. GSM phone lines and some land lines were also cut out and very diffficult to contact even in local. GSM short message sending service is not working also.

As protests built to more than 100,000, the government apparently allowed internal reports until three days into the crackdown, raising fears that it planned to intensify measures that left 9 dead on Thursday.

It also had immediate effects on the information flow out of the country. “Exile groups and human rights organizations who are in touch with people inside Myanmar said they had less news today than before about clashes,” Seth Mydans of The New York Times reported from Bangkok.

A blogger we wrote about on Thursday, Ko Htike, is also having major problems because of the internet cuts, losing the ability to put out a major part of his reporting so far.