Nam Davies (Mizzima News)
September 26, 2007 

The Burmese military junta is now desperate to stop information of the turmoil in the country filtering out to the rest of the world. It has blocked some domestic blogs today at about 6 p.m. to restrict and stop free flow of information.

The authorities blocked popular blogs http://www.kohtike.blogspot.com, http://niknayman.blogspot.com and http://soneseyar.blogspot.com which continuously posted news and photographs of ongoing protests against the fuel price hike and economic hardship.

"Curbs of freedom of expression by the people and restricting the free media are a blatant violation of fundamental human rights. We condemn the SPDC vehemently," A Niknayman blogger said.

"Access Denied" notice appeared when they tried to log on to these banned websites and blogs. These blogs posted the protest march news and pictures in which monks, students, artists and ethnic people vent their grievances, a blogger said.

Similarly the authorities recently banned popular the 'You Tube' website where video clips of Burmese democratic movements were posted. They also disconnected the mobile and landline phones of leading politicians, reporters of domestic and foreign media and wire agencies and 88 generation student activists.

The Government owned MPT and Bagan Cyber Tech blocked the websites and blogs to restrict and ban the free flow of information in and out of Burma. Niknayman said that even though the government blocked their websites and blogs, the readers can still visit their blogs and websites through proxy servers.

"The readers can visit our blogs through proxy. But we worry about the difficulty in locating our websites through these proxy servers", the Niknayman blog owner said.

Just before the recent blog ban, a rumour spread that the authorities were planning to block internet connections also.