New York Times Story on CSB President

On April 8, 1997, an article appeared in the New York Times' Metro Section titled "A Guerrilla War on the Internet". The complete text appears below.

"A Guerrilla War on the Internet" by William Glaberson

ITHACA, N.Y. -- In a small apartment on a peaceful street here, on most nights a father tucks his two children into bed. Then, as he describes it, he goes to war in the next room: he switches his computer on.

Htun Aung Gyaw, a former Burmese jungle fighter and student leader, dials up the Internet. There, he joins other opponents of his country's military government in electronic debates, plans, and hopes. For many pro-democracy activists from Burma and for political dissidents from many other countries, the Internet has become a headquarters for every type of political action from plans for corporate boycotts to tactical deliberations.

"I came out of the jungle to get training and arms and go back and join with the people and win the struggle," Htun said, sitting in his modest living room near the Cornell University campus here. "But when our dreams did not come true, we had to change our strategies. We are weak. That's why we need high tech: they have an army; they have power; they have money. This is a new kind of warfare we are fighting, Internet warfare."

If it is a new kind of warfare, Htun Aung Gyaw (pronounced ton ung jaw) is an example of a new kind of foot soldier who can be found in American cities and towns. At night, in the glow of their computer screens, they are part of electronic communities that are concerned with faraway events in places like East Timor, Tibet, and Taiwan.

But by day, they lead the difficult lives of political exiles. And to judge from Htun's story, they may be subject to greater stresses than the expatriate activists who came before because the computer transports their cause into their living rooms. Htun, 44, said he is sometimes so convinced that he is at home in Rangoon, after a night on the computer, that he wakes up the next morning unaware that he is in Ithaca.

Then, during the day, he said, it is sometimes hard to concentrate on his job reshelving books at Cornell's Olin Library or trying to complete his thesis for a Cornell master's degree in Southeast Asian studies.

He finds himself thinking, he said, about how much work he and the people who remained behind in Burma have to do. "I really feel close to them all the time when I read on the Net," he said.

Or he will reflect on the news reports he read on the Internet from electronic information services designed to keep activists up to date about events back home.

He will think about the e-mail from other pro-democracy supporters he has to answer. His mind will wander from the eight-hour-a-day job he took to support his family in America. "Sometimes, I hate myself because I am doing what I don't want to do," he said. "What I want to do is do things for my country full time."

Some leaders of the pro-democracy movement say the Internet has become a powerful tool because it binds together distant allies.

"Many of us are like orphans, we're away from home, we're away from our family, and yet we have grown close to each other over the Internet," said Zarni, founder of the Free Burma Coalition, which runs Internet sites for the Burmese pro-democracy movement from the University of Wisconsin at Madison.

Zarni, who, like some other Burmese has a single name, said that people across the country like Htun, including many American students, play a vital part in the pro-democracy fight through their electronic participation.

Online, Htun and other supporters of the pro-democracy movement plot. They talk. They gossip. They distribute information about the military's maneuvers and they circulate news about their Nobel Peace Prize-winning leader, Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, who insists upon nonviolent methods. They plan lobbying efforts. They discuss public-relations campaigns that are drawing increasing American attention to their cause, like one push that led to a March 3 hearing of the New York City Council on a proposed bill that would bar the city from dealing with companies that do business with the junta. The online fighters have also worked to keep up pressure on President Clinton to impose U.S. government sanctions on Burma.

But in his off-line life here in Ithaca, Htun's blinking computer screen can be an unwanted rival. Htun's wife, Swe Swe Myint, and their son and daughter, who are 11 and 10 now, were separated from Htun for six years until they joined him here in 1995. He arrived here in 1992 as a political refugee after three years in Thailand.

His wife said she supports his political work but sometimes, when he turns on the computer, she finds herself growing outraged. "He should do that," she said, "I agree with that. But I and my children were away from him for six years. And when we arrived, he had no time for us."

At the library and in the master's program at Cornell, some people say they admire Htun for his role in the pro-democracy movement. In the 1970s, he was imprisoned for five years in Burma for fighting the government. Then, in 1989, he was sentenced to death in absentia for treason because he was the first chairman of an influential armed students' group, the All Burma Students' Democratic Front, which took to the jungle to fight the military.

Still, even some of those who say they are admirers say that Htun is sometimes so distracted by his involvement in the movement as it passes through his computer screen that he is unable to do what is expected of him. "It goes in cycles," said Joel Copenhagen, Htun's supervisor at the library. "Sometimes he gets enough sleep and things go well. Sometimes things don't."

Htun, a youthful man with a quick laugh, said Copenhagen recently told him that he should find a grant or a sponsor so that he could dedicate himself full time to the pro-democracy movement. Some of Htun's friends say that time has passed him by for any leadership role. Some say he was once such a skilled politician among the students that he could be a government minister if the pro-democracy movement ever took power.

Htun said he would be ready to go home at a moment's notice if the military government collapsed. He would not speculate about any position that might interest him. But he said that he was anxious for the day he could return to his homeland.

"Even under the regime in Rangoon, when I was in hiding, I was really comfortable with my friends," he said. "Here it is always pressure, stress, stress."

In Ithaca, he said, he is always worried about debt. Most of the $2,000 he and his wife take home every month from full-time jobs is immediately spent. There is the rent bill, the car-loan payment, the phone bill, and the heat bill.

And then, he said, there is the bill for that necessity of any pro-democracy fighter in the 1990s. Htun must pay $200 every month on the loan he took out to buy his computer.