BURMA: Mobile Phones, Radios Keep Resistance Alive

By Marwaan Macan-Markar

BANGKOK, Feb 28 (IPS) - Somewhere in the dilapidated city of Rangoon is a man on the run since August last year. He has sheltered in over 10 homes so far. But he expects to continue avoiding arrest by Burma’s dreaded military or intelligence forces.

When Tun Myint Aung shifts from one safehouse to another, he goes armed with two items that have become indispensable. They are a mobile phone and a portable, Chinese-made radio, to listen to such anti-junta stations like the Democratic Voice of Burma, based in Oslo, Norway.

‘’The phone and the radio are very important now. I always take them wherever I go. They are next to me when I sleep,’’ says Tun Myint Aung, in a voice with a hint of excitement, during a recent telephone interview with IPS from his current safehouse in the former Burmese capital. ‘’Through them I stay in touch with people outside, my friends, and follow the news about events in the country.’’

But his Tecsum shortwave radio has taken on added value in military-ruled Burma’s current oppressive climate. ‘’The radio has become a social weapon for me and for our movement,’’ adds Tun Myint Aung over the phone, an act that could get him jailed. ‘’It is how the messages against the military regime are broadcast by us and others against them.’’

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