From The Asia Times
By Richard Ehrlich

Myanmar is apparently using photos sent to websites, television stations and other media to arrest protesters, while at the same time praising China’s 1989 Tiananmen Square crackdown which turned foreign news videos into virtual wanted posters to capture dissidents.

Myanmar security forces have detained over 2,000 people in the wake of last week’s popular unrest and military crackdown. The authorities claim to have already released over 680 of those detained, but there are new reports of continued arrests. “Residents say military trucks patrol neighborhood streets during the night with loudspeakers broadcasting warnings: ‘We have photographs. We are going to make arrests’,” the Thailand-based, Irrawaddy magazine and other news organizations reported on Wednesday.

Myanmar’s junta employed camera-wielding security forces during September’s pro-democracy marches while harassing and assaulting independent journalists who tried to cover the unrest. The regime appears to be also gleaning the faces and identities of protesters from countless video and still photos shot in Yangon by journalists, bloggers and local residents who used cell phones, e-mail and websites to transmit pictures to the outside world during more than two weeks of public marches.

Bold, shouting and angry faces of Myanmar citizen protesters appeared on television screens, websites and news publications worldwide, attracting emotional international support and a seemingly insatiable demand by the outside world for more and more images. The Internet community, global media and world leaders gleefully praised the stunning use of cyberspace as a powerful way of showing the outside world Myanmar citizens demanding for democracy in their closed and repressed country. Now these images are being used against the protesters.

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