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Burma - Free Speech Check out our additional educational topics: Brad Adams, director of Human Rights Watch's Asia division, in a 2004 address described the human rights situation in the country as appalling: "Burma is the textbook example of a police state. Government informants and spies are omnipresent. Average Burmese people are afraid to speak to foreigners except in most superficial of manners for fear of being hauled in later for questioning or worse. There is no freedom of speech, assembly or association. The Freedom House report notes that the authorities arbitrarily search citizens' homes, intercept mail, and monitor telephone conversations, and that the possession and use of telephones, fax machines, computers, modems, and software are criminalized. "Freedom of speech or publication, while admittedly non-existent among our fellow citizens back home under the current system of governance, is a pillar of any democracy, to stress the obvious. But it exists for those of us privileged enough to check our emails, undeterred and uninterrupted. At least, we should develop healthy respect and tolerance of diverse views and ideas, using the Internet as a space where we who have this privilege use it wisely, rather than in ways vicious, nasty and self-destructive."
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Benefit for Burma is a project of the Mighty Mic Human Rights Awareness Group at UCLA.
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