against anti-coup protesters to contact them. In September 2017, the picture of the execution
of ten Rohingya men by soldiers was used to establish in detail the unfolding of a massacre in
Inn Din village. The photo also served as a base to entrap two Reuters journalists and sentence
them to a year and a half in jail.
Countless national and regional publications still manage to bring news of what is happening
across the country thanks to an extended network of reporters working undercover and
citizens filming local events despite immense risks. The Myanmar Evictions Watch Collective
continues to track and record forced evictions and violations of housing rights. Every day, the
Assistance Association of Political Prisoners of Burma, a non-profit human rights organization
founded in 2000 by former political prisoners living in exile on the Thai-Burma border, releases
updated numbers of people arrested, sentenced, charged and killed by SAC based on insider
documented reports. International Media Support (IMS), a non-profit organization working to
strengthen the capacity of media, is assessing the situation of dozens of media houses inside
and outside the country. The Burma Civil War Museum has the ambition to collect information
about the past and current political history of Myanmar.
Activists fear that the state monopoly on communication and education enables authoritarian
military leaders to perpetrate violence by dividing communities and maintaining their undue
power for generations. Thus, volunteer troops of striking teachers and informaticians have
reacted to the latest coup by creating a multitude of independent platforms, such as Free
Online Educational Institution Myanmar, Learn Myanmar, Run Free Education or the Myanmar
School App. The Spring University Myanmar offers online introductory courses in five ethnic
languages, the course fees are donated to communities affected and displaced by the war.
The NUG has the ambition to create an alternative education system for all: "We want to
produce new learning materials so that students can study on their own continuously, from
basic to higher levels of education, including technical and vocational education. Most of these
programs will be online, and our network of teachers in the field will share these lessons with
their students, who will pass them on to their friends who don't have Internet or a connected
device" says Dr. Sai Khaing Myo, Deputy Minister of Education of NUG, formerly the head of the
Department of International Relations in Yangon University of Foreign Languages. H.H. and a
mathematics teacher before being fired for taking part in the CDM. He volunteered as soon as
the NUG announced the plan: "We have eleven majors to cover. Other striking teachers assist
me and we work under the umbrella of the NUG. Experts from the Burmese diaspora and
foreign teachers also help us to upgrade the curriculum."
As the level of Internet freedom in Myanmar is now the third-lowest in the world, after China
and Iran, numerous “Digital Safety Clinics” are providing tips on how to protect one’s own
devices and communications against authoritarian governments and unscrupulous big tech
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