PM hails Burmese bloggers

Relentless reporting by bloggers will shame the Burmese military rulers into helping victims of Cyclone Nargis, Gordon Brown has said.

Speaking at the Google Zeitgeist conference in Watford, the Prime Minister said the eyes of the world were watching Burma and the country cannot remain hidden.

The PM said: "It is true that we have not been able to get as much food and supplies into Burma as we would like, but now a country like Burma cannot remain hidden."

The Burmese military junta has been heavily criticised for its slow response to Cyclone Nargis, which struck the South East Asian country on 2 May and left about 78,000 dead and another 55,000 missing, according to official figures.

Mr Brown spoke of a "coup de blog" forcing governments to act and be accountable in countries like Zimbabwe, Sudan and Burma.

Restrictions on the media in Burma have meant that much of the information about the aftermath of the cyclone is coming from blogs.

Had the internet been such a powerful tool for communication in the mid-Nineties the PM said that there might not have been "such silence" during the genocide in Rwanda.

Mr Brown was at the Google conference to announce a new partnership between the search engine giant and the British government on climate change mapping.

The PM has also begun an initiative to bring Prime Minister's questions to the public via the YouTube video-sharing website.

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