HOW AUNG SAN SUU KYI DISCOVERED THE CELL PHONE
January 23rd 2011 06:45
... AND NOW STANDS TWITTER AND EMAIL READY
The online Irrawaddy news service earlier this month ran a repeat of an allegedly “exclusive” interview the publisher Aung Zaw conducted with Myanmar democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi shortly after her release from house detention late last year.
The interview appeared in the December 2010 issue of the Irrawaddy’s glossy magazine, The Irrawaddy Journal, which is now “suspended” due to lack of funds.
In that interview, Aung San Suu Kyi once again marvelled at that newfangled gadget, the cell phone.
She said that on her release, “The first thing I noticed was that there were many more young people in the crowd that welcomed me. Many of them were using cell phones. They were taking photographs with their phones, which I had never experienced before. There was no such thing ten years ago, but it has become quite widespread these days. I think there are more communication lines than before. It is important.”
Indeed.
Aung San Suu Kyi’s bewildered confrontation with the cell phone featured in one of the very first interviews she gave on her release, with the BBC.
The BBC reporter said, “In the long years she has been under house arrest, the world has changed. The internet and the mobile phone have revolutionised the lives of billions around the world, including in Burma.
“Ms Suu Kyi was allowed to use neither gadget while she was a prisoner. When she made her first appearance on Saturday and saw the thousands of mobiles held up towards her by her supporters who wanted to take her photograph, she was taken aback.
“She was surprised when she first handled the mobile which someone gave her to phone her son Kim in Bangkok. She had seen them in photographs, but this one seemed so small and inadequate, and she found it hard to know how to listen to it and talk into it."
She repeated this wonderment in an allegedly “exclusive” GlobalPost interview with Japanese-based journalist and publisher of The Cambodia Daily newspaper, Bernard Krisher, published on December 20, 2010.
Krisher asked, “I suspect you are talking on a cell phone. Have you used a cell phone before?”
Aung San Suu Kyi replied, “I only used a cell phone for the first time after I was released. I had difficulty coping with it because it seemed so small and insubstantial.”
She also revealed, “I don’t have email yet. We just had the telephone line in the NLD office reconnected after eight years. We'll have to wait a little longer before we graduate to the email stage yet.”
In an interview on NBC Dateline on August 13, 2000 she revealed that even the telephone was a “gadget” long denied to her. She said not long after her initial house arrest in 1989, “They cut off my phone. They actually brought a pair of scissors and cut off the wires and carried my phone away.”
But Aung san Suu Kyi is possibly more familiar with modern “communication lines” than she lets on.
On October 18 last year, weeks before her release from house detention, the Guardian in the UK reported, “Burmese opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi intends to start tweeting once she is released from house arrest in order to communicate with the younger generation, her lawyer said today…
“Her lawyer, Nyan Win, who has visited her twice in the past week, said: ‘She told me she wants to use Twitter to get in touch with the younger generation inside and outside the country. She wishes to be able to tweet every day and keep in touch’.”
Meanwhile, on Friday January 21, Mizzima News reported that Aung San Suu Kyi has received approval to use the internet at her home.
On Thursday, technicians from the state-run internet service provider, Yatanarpon Teleport, set up an internet connection at her home on University Avenue Road in Yangon.
Aung San Suu Kyi will apply for a ‘mail4you’ e-mail account, which is a product of Yatanarpon Teleport and the only officially authorized e-mail account in Myanmar.
The online Irrawaddy news service earlier this month ran a repeat of an allegedly “exclusive” interview the publisher Aung Zaw conducted with Myanmar democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi shortly after her release from house detention late last year.
The interview appeared in the December 2010 issue of the Irrawaddy’s glossy magazine, The Irrawaddy Journal, which is now “suspended” due to lack of funds.
In that interview, Aung San Suu Kyi once again marvelled at that newfangled gadget, the cell phone.
She said that on her release, “The first thing I noticed was that there were many more young people in the crowd that welcomed me. Many of them were using cell phones. They were taking photographs with their phones, which I had never experienced before. There was no such thing ten years ago, but it has become quite widespread these days. I think there are more communication lines than before. It is important.”
Aung San Suu Kyi’s bewildered confrontation with the cell phone featured in one of the very first interviews she gave on her release, with the BBC.
The BBC reporter said, “In the long years she has been under house arrest, the world has changed. The internet and the mobile phone have revolutionised the lives of billions around the world, including in Burma.
“Ms Suu Kyi was allowed to use neither gadget while she was a prisoner. When she made her first appearance on Saturday and saw the thousands of mobiles held up towards her by her supporters who wanted to take her photograph, she was taken aback.
“She was surprised when she first handled the mobile which someone gave her to phone her son Kim in Bangkok. She had seen them in photographs, but this one seemed so small and inadequate, and she found it hard to know how to listen to it and talk into it."
Krisher asked, “I suspect you are talking on a cell phone. Have you used a cell phone before?”
Aung San Suu Kyi replied, “I only used a cell phone for the first time after I was released. I had difficulty coping with it because it seemed so small and insubstantial.”
She also revealed, “I don’t have email yet. We just had the telephone line in the NLD office reconnected after eight years. We'll have to wait a little longer before we graduate to the email stage yet.”
In an interview on NBC Dateline on August 13, 2000 she revealed that even the telephone was a “gadget” long denied to her. She said not long after her initial house arrest in 1989, “They cut off my phone. They actually brought a pair of scissors and cut off the wires and carried my phone away.”
But Aung san Suu Kyi is possibly more familiar with modern “communication lines” than she lets on.
On October 18 last year, weeks before her release from house detention, the Guardian in the UK reported, “Burmese opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi intends to start tweeting once she is released from house arrest in order to communicate with the younger generation, her lawyer said today…
“Her lawyer, Nyan Win, who has visited her twice in the past week, said: ‘She told me she wants to use Twitter to get in touch with the younger generation inside and outside the country. She wishes to be able to tweet every day and keep in touch’.”
Meanwhile, on Friday January 21, Mizzima News reported that Aung San Suu Kyi has received approval to use the internet at her home.
On Thursday, technicians from the state-run internet service provider, Yatanarpon Teleport, set up an internet connection at her home on University Avenue Road in Yangon.
Aung San Suu Kyi will apply for a ‘mail4you’ e-mail account, which is a product of Yatanarpon Teleport and the only officially authorized e-mail account in Myanmar.
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