Myanmar democracy icon Aung San Suu Kyi, who spent years as a prisoner in her own home with no telephone or Internet access, says now that she is free she is too busy to use Facebook and Twitter.
“I just haven’t had the time,” the Nobel Peace Prize winner said in an interview at her party offices in Yangon.
“If I were to tweet and so on, it would take up so much of my time. I have to confess we are a bit snowed under because paying off a debt of work that has accumulated over seven years is not done in a hurry,” she said.
Soon after her release in November, Aung San Suu Kyi had expressed a desire to use social networking sites. However, she said that for now, her party would make do with Web sites set up by its supporters overseas.
Internet connections are notoriously slow in Myanmar, whose rulers also have a history of blocking critical Web sites and jailing online dissidents.
Social networking sites were used by anti-government demonstrators to thwart censorship during pro-democracy revolts in Tunisia and Egypt.
And during a failed monk-led uprising in Myanmar in 2007, citizens used the Web to leak extensive accounts and video to the outside world, prompting the regime to block Internet access.
Suu Kyi said that an Arab-style uprising was not the answer to Myanmar’s problems, and welcomed tentative signs of political change under the new nominally civilian government.
Her party won a 1990 election, but was never allowed to take office. It boycotted an election held last year, the first in two decades, and as a result it was delisted as a political party by the regime.
However, recently the regime has adopted a more conciliatory stance toward its opponents, including Aung San Suu Kyi, who met Burmese President Thein Sein last month.
Internet users in army--dominated Myanmar during the week said they were able to see previously blocked media Web sites, including the Burmese-language version of the BBC, but doubts remained about whether the move would last.
The country’s Internet legislation has long been among the world’s most repressive, according to the Paris-based Reporters Without Borders.
X-37B COMPARISON: China’s spaceplane is most likely testing technology, much like US’ vehicle, said Victoria Samson, an official at the Secure World Foundation China’s shadowy, uncrewed reusable spacecraft, which launches atop a rocket booster and lands at a secretive military airfield, is most likely testing technology, but could also be used for manipulating or retrieving satellites, experts said. The spacecraft, on its third mission, was last month observed releasing an object, moving several kilometers away and then maneuvering back to within a few hundred meters of it. “It’s obvious that it has a military application, including, for example, closely inspecting objects of the enemy or disabling them, but it also has non-military applications,” said Marco Langbroek, a lecturer in optical space situational awareness at Delft
Malaysia yesterday installed a motorcycle-riding billionaire sultan as its new king in lavish ceremonies for a post seen as a ballast in times of political crises. The coronation ceremony for Malaysia’s King Sultan Ibrahim, 65, at the National Palace in Kuala Lumpur followed his oath-taking in January as the country’s 17th monarch. Malaysia is a constitutional monarchy, with a unique arrangement that sees the throne change hands every five years between the rulers of nine Malaysian states headed by centuries-old Islamic royalty. While chiefly ceremonial, the position of king has in the past few years played an increasingly important role. Royal intervention was
The Philippine Air Force must ramp up pilot training if it is to buy 20 or more multirole fighter jets as it modernizes and expands joint operations with its navy, a commander said yesterday. A day earlier US National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan said that the US “will do what is necessary” to see that the Philippines is able to resupply a ship on the Second Thomas Shoal (Renai Shoal, 仁愛暗沙) that Manila uses to reinforce its claims to the atoll. Sullivan said the US would prefer that the Philippines conducts the resupplies of the small crew on the warship Sierra Madre,
AIRLINES RECOVERING: Two-thirds of the flights canceled on Saturday due to the faulty CrowdStrike update that hit 8.5 million devices worldwide occurred in the US As the world continues to recover from massive business and travel disruptions caused by a faulty software update from cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike, malicious actors are trying to exploit the situation for their own gain. Government cybersecurity agencies across the globe and CrowdStrike CEO George Kurtz are warning businesses and individuals around the world about new phishing schemes that involve malicious actors posing as CrowdStrike employees or other tech specialists offering to assist those recovering from the outage. “We know that adversaries and bad actors will try to exploit events like this,” Kurtz said in a statement. “I encourage everyone to remain vigilant