Articles from - http://www.sampsoniaway.org/bi-monthly/2010/07/27/burmese-media-revolution-shouts-for-freedom-from-exile/
by Silvia Duarte
Maung Yit and MoeMaKa
Maung Yit joined the Burmese democracy movement while studying electrical engineering at Rangoon University. After graduating in 1993, he became a writer and cartoonist for local magazines and journals. During that time he developed his skills as a technology journalist. Five years later, almost totally giving up hope for the struggle for democracy and freedom of the press in Burma, he left to find a job to support his family. In 2002, he arrived in Fairfield, Iowa, to study computer science.
He had wanted move to Silicon Valley and pursue an IT job, but he ended up in the San Francisco Bay Area. In 2003, he and his friends founded MoeMaKa Media, an Internet news source, as a way to combine freedom of press and Internet activism and reignite their struggle for democracy.
In 2006 MoeMaKa’s founders decided to diversify their format to get around the government censors inside Burma and started using the blog format to present their content. MoeMaKa’s is one of 800 active Burmese blogs.
According to a survey conducted by the Burma Media Association in August 2009, most of the blogs are hosted by BlogSpot and WordPress. Eighty percent are in Burmese, 8 percent in English, and 10 percent are bilingual. Three-fourths of the bloggers are between the ages 21 and 35 and have a college education.
Over half of these bloggers are living in Burma and began blogging less than two years ago. The majority focus on entertainment-related topics. Only 8 percent discuss news-related subjects—one of those is by Maung Yit.
Over email, Maung Yit remembered some of the news items that MoeMaka published. One was a video in which desperate Burmese parents talk about watching the army take their children to become child soldiers.
The blogger also remembered the May 2010 drought when Burmese people were facing a scarcity of potable water in many areas during a record heat wave. “With the help of community volunteers’ groups and citizen journalists, we could report the news, raise charity from overseas, and help the Burmese community,” he said.
The freedom that the MoeMaKa writers have to publish this kind of news is completely unavailable for the bloggers inside the country. In 2009 the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) named the 10 Worst Countries to be a Blogger. Burma leads the dishonor roll. This is because of cases like that of Nay Phone Latt, a blogger who was honored by the 2010 PEN/Barbara Goldsmith Freedom to Write Award from the PEN American Center.
Nay Phone Latt had a popular blog that offered political commentary and poetry, both expressing the frustrations and hopes of a generation eager to make its mark on society. He was also the owner of two Internet cafés. In 2007 he published news and photographs of the Saffron Revolution. In January 2008 he was arrested and sentenced to 12 years in prison. He is currently being held in Pa-an Prison in Karen state, 135 miles from his home in Rangoon, making it difficult for his family to visit.
According to Maung Yit, MoeMaKa includes bloggers from inside Burma. “We have at least 5 to 10 regular contributors inside Burma. We can’t reveal their actual names and identities,” he said. MoeMaKa’s volunteers don’t receive financial compensation. “It is just artists and media people’s passion to work for the same cause for Burma. We raise funds and accept donations to run our operation at minimum cost and to support basic material and tools for our team inside Burma. We are now registered as a nonprofit organization.”
Now MoeMaKa is a well-known website and blog among the Burmese community; most of the Burmese bloggers are willing and happy to publish there. Maung Yit plays different roles: he is a webmaster, editor, writer, reporter, cartoonist, columnist, and jack-of-all-trades. After more than 20 years fighting against the junta’s censorship, he just sighs. He still hopes for a miracle: to be able to walk through Burma’s democratic streets.
Read Silvia’s bio.
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