Amnesty wants to raise funds to get 4,000 radio sets into Burma to enable people in the run up to the country’s elections to listen to broadcasts from outside, such as the Burmese services of VoA and BBC, and the Democratic Voice of Burma.
Amnesty says that it estimates that around 12 people will use each radio, so up to 50,000 people could be reached by independent news broadcasts if its appeal is successful.
One person commented abou8t the plan on the Amnesty website, saying “Awesome idea – the people I met in Burma actually knows a lot of what’s going on around the world from BBC and VOA – and a lot from the short wave radio they got!”
Radio remains the vital – and essentially only – tool to reach people in Burma who have no access to free, independent news about what’s happening in the country. Burmese domestic media is heavily censored.
