Interviews with Min Yan Naing
Burma
Technology
The Difficulty of Using Technology in Burma.
Transcript
Technology is very important for our future. Yes, that’s very easy to give the information and educate to the people early. SIM card [A Subscriber Identity Module card, a small chip that allows mobile phone usage.] – very expensive right now, but very different with previous time. Previous times are about, I think, at 3,000 U.S. dollars. Right now you have to give 300 U.S. dollars for one SIM card. Some SIM cards are 200 U.S. dollars like this, but very expensive right now SIM card expensive. Internet is very – only use it for the one class – upper class, high class.
An office, that’s only – normal people cannot afford to buy the Internet access in their home. Most of the people use to Internet shop. They use social media a lot, but they using Facebook, they are checking – looking at pictures of what they are doing, uploading the photos, that sort of thing. For us it’s a – we upload what we are doing also, where I am right for what I am doing, like this for the political activists doing like – using like this. We also upload to YouTube, our government has access denied to this YouTube website.
All of the TV stations are government-owned, not private. And the daily newspapers, also government. So boring to watch the news as all – government.
About Min Yan Naing
Min Yan Naing is a Burmese civil society activist, youth leader and rapper. He was born and lives in Rangoon. He became active in a series of 1996 and 1998 student protests against the military junta ruling the country.
In 2007, together with several schoolmates, Min Yan Naing founded Generation Wave, an underground civil society group. Generation Wave works to motivate young Burmese to become engaged in politics through music and nonviolent protest actions. Using a variety of musical styles, including rap and hip-hop, Generation Wave recordings and videos encourage youth to take a stand in favor of democracy and human rights. Like many opposition groups, Generation Wave has been unable to register as a non-governmental organization and has faced many obstacles to its activities, which are illegal in the eyes of the military regime. Many of the movement’s activists have faced arrest and detention.
Generation Wave uses a variety of techniques to spread its messages, including loading material onto CDs and flash drives for distribution in public places. The group is also known for adapting tactics used in Serbia in 2000 to oust dictator Slobodan Milosevic, such as using graffiti and distributing leaflets to encourage youth activism.
As the Burmese government has eased some of its repressive tactics, Generation Wave has moved into greater visibility. Many of its detained activists were released by the government in early 2012. Generation Wave was active in the by-election campaign that saw opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi elected to the Burmese parliament.
A number of Generation Wave’s music videos are available on the Internet, including these:
Generation Wave’s Hip Hop song
WHOMADEWHO w/ GENERATION WAVE : “LEFT HAND OF THE BOXER”