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YANGON : Internet links in Myanmar abruptly broke off as a curfew ended early on Saturday, computer users said, just hours after they were restored for the first time in a week.
Residents said they could only use the Internet during the night after the network returned late on Friday, restricting the flow of information in and out of the country.
"The Internet only worked during the curfew, from about 10:00 pm to 5:00 am," one Internet user said.
Myanmar's government had shut its main Internet link a week earlier and closed cyber-cafes here after citizens used the web to transmit pictures and video clips of the military's violent crackdown on anti-government rallies.
Paris-based media rights group Reporters Without Borders has condemned Myanmar as a "paradise for censors" and listed the country as one of the world's most restrictive for press freedoms.
UN telecommunications agency chief Hamadoun Toure said Friday in Geneva that no government had the right to cut their citizens off from the Internet, following recent incidents in Myanmar.
Toure, who heads the International Telecommunications Union (ITU), underlined that UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon had recently described safe access to the Internet as a basic human right.
The Internet blockage has severely reduced the flow of video, photos and first-hand reports of the violence there that had helped galvanise an outcry against the ruling generals.
The cut was widely blamed on security forces there.
A telecom official in Myanmar had confirmed that the nation's main link to the Internet was down, but blamed the problem on a damaged undersea cable. - AFP/ch
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