AP News, January 3rd, 2008
The exiled Myanmar network Democratic Voice of Burma said Thursday it was starting daily broadcasts to pro-democracy activists at home, a sharp increase from its current one-hour-per-week transmissions.
The Oslo-based network's radio, television and Internet reports were crucial sources of information for protesters inside Burma, and also helped get information out of the largely closed country, during a pro-democracy uprising in September that was brutally crushed by Myanmar's military government.
The network's chief editor, Aye Chan Naing, said daily satellite broadcasts of about an hour would begin Friday, and would include reports from inside Myanmar, also known as Burma, as well as news from the outside world that is likely to be censored by Myanmar's military regime.
"It's going to make quite a difference for the people of Burma, who don't get other information," Naing told The Associated Press.
The government of Myanmar this week dramatically increased license fees for satellite dishes from $5 to $800 — about three times the annual salary of a public school teacher. The move appeared designed to block the foreign news channels that beamed in global criticism of its recent crackdown on pro-democracy protests.
"It's an impossible amount," said Naing. "We don't know how it will affect us. There are hundreds of thousands of (privately owned) satellite dishes. If people start refusing to pay, we don't know how the government will react."
He said the new fee could fuel the anger many of Myanmar's citizens already feel toward the hard-line regime, by depriving them not only of world news, but also simple pleasures such as broadcasts of soccer matches and foreign soap operas.
Exiled pro-democracy student activists, including Naing, founded the radio station in 1992, a year after Burmese opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi won the Nobel Peace Prize in Oslo for her peaceful pro-democracy campaign. Suu Kyi's party won a 1990 general election, but was not allowed to take office by the military, which has been in power since 1962. She has largely been held under house arrest since then.
The network, funded by grants from government and free speech groups from Norway, Sweden, Denmark, the Netherlands and the United States, added weekly television broadcasts in May 2005.
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On the Net:
http://www.dvb.no
