BANGKOK - Journalists in Rangoon are reporting a rapidly deteriorating situation for covering the sporadic protests, and brewing crisis, in Burma.

One week after the breakout of rare public protests over rising fuel prices, and within days of a resulting government crackdown on activists and oppositionists, SEAPA is receiving troubling news that the work of journalists and the flow of information inside the country is further being restricted.  

The Democratic Voice of Burma says that on 22 August, a local journalist had his camera confiscated and destroyed by thugs deployed by the government. The following day, DVB adds, a Reuters correspondent was bodily threatened and pushed away by a similar mob as he tried to cover one of sporadic protests as it was beginning to form. Other local journalists were reportedly ordered to stay away from the demonstrators.  

SEAPA sources inside Rangoon meanwhile are reporting a palpable drop in Internet and phone access in the country. The government, through the state-owned Myanmar Infotech Corp. Ltd., holds a monopoly over Internet providers in the country. SEAPA contacts say whole pockets of Rangoon are suffering from intermittent and rolling interruptions in their access to both the Internet and phone services.  

Web-based email and telephony services such as Gmail and GTalk - already de facto banned in past years, but until two weeks ago still reliably accessible via proxy servers (and apparently tolerated by Burmese officials) - have seen more disruptions and become less reliable, individuals have also told SEAPA.  

The difficulties and harassment experienced by journalists is leading to further self-censorship in Rangoon's local journals. There is virtually no coverage of the protests inside the country, save for the official propaganda placed in state-owned and controlled newspapers such as the New Light of Myanmar.  

More than 150 people have been arrested in Burma in the past week, all owing to the Rangoon junta's crackdown on fuel price protests.