Un regalo particolarmente sgradito

Quando la Cina ha regalato duemila radioline da distribuire tra le vittime del ciclone che aveva colpito la Birmania, le locali autorità si sono fatte prendere dal panico. Duemila apparecchi radio capaci di sintonizzarsi sulle onde corte? Inaudito. Chissà quali menzogne avrebbero potuto diffondere. La Democratic Voice of Burma - la ong di esiliati birmani basata in Norvegia che cerca di diffondere una informazione corretta via radio e attraverso Internet - riferisce che a quel punto sono stati mobilitati gli ingegneri "di Stato". I quali hanno preso le duemila radio, hanno disattivato la sintonia delle onde corte e hanno regalato alla gente (con tanto di foto ricordo da mandare agli amici cinesi) duemila radio monche, capaci solo di sintonizzarsi sulle emittenti di stato in onde medie (di FM nella giungla non se ne parla neppure).
La nuova domanda del guru dovrebbe essere: moriranno prima la radio analogica, la giunta birmana o i birmani tout court?

Junta's information black-out

Tai Kyaw

Jul 4, 2008 (DVB)–Burma’s military regime is still keeping quiet about an incident following Cyclone Nargis. It is a minor incident, but one that would surprise the people of Burma and the international community.
Relief supplies provided for Burma’s cyclone victims from China included 2000 radios. They were handed over to the junta authorities. Low-ranking officials were in a difficult situation when they received those cheap radios because they were not sure if they should give them to refugees or hold them back, so they asked their superiors what to do.
The information about the radios pushed high-ranking officials into a tight corner. They seemed to be worried about affecting the relationship with China if they did not give the radios out. On the other hand, if they distributed the radios, the 2000 people who received them would be able to listen to foreign broadcasting services such as BBC, VOA, DVB and RFA, which they did not want their citizens to be able to access. Finally, an order came through that radios should be distributed to cyclone victims only after they had been adapted so that they could not be used to listen to foreign broadcasting services.
As a consequence, engineers and officials at the Communication Department faced a heavy workload. They had to remove the short wave tuning system used by foreign broadcasting services to air their programmes from each radio. Engineers working for the Communication Department in Rangoon Division spent a lot of time on these radios worth US$ 5 each. After the radios had been adapted, the authorities gave them out in Irrawaddy division for people to listen to weather news, took photos of their donations and then sent the photos back to donors in China.
When village headmen and others received the radios, they were unable to tune into foreign radio broadcasts because the short wave system had been disabled. They were also unable to listen to City FM since they were far away from Rangoon. As a result, they all ended up only being able to listen to programmes from Myanmar Radio and Television Department, the state-controlled radio station transmitted on medium wave.
The way the military regime dealt with the donated radio shoes the lengths to which it will go to black out information and stop its citizens listening to news broadcasts.
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