The Wall Street Journal reports today that “citizen journalists” in Myanmar have been using cell phones and blogs to get out news of the military crackdown in the country, following mass protests sparked by dissenting Buddhist monks. Many of the reports have been going to an exile publication about Myanmar, based in New Delhi, called Mizzima News.

The WSJ article, by Geoffrey A. Fowler, says, “In the age of YouTube, cellphone cameras and text messaging, technology is playing a critical role in helping news organizations and international groups follow Myanmar’s biggest protests in nearly two decades. Citizen witnesses are using cellphones and the Internet to beam out images of bloodied monks and street fires, subverting the Myanmar government’s effort to control media coverage and present a sanitized version of the uprising.”

But now there are reports that the military junta in Myanmar has cut off Internet access in the country, blocking the bloggers and others sending images and text over the Internet. Ko Hitke, a blogger who has been featuring reports and images from Myanmar, writes today that “I sadly announce that the Burmese military junta has cut off the internet connection throughout the country. I therefore would not be able to feed in pictures of the brutality by the brutal Burmese military junta.”

One of the images that made it out of Myanmar was of 50 year-old Japanese video journalist Kenji Nagai, who worked for Agence France-Press (AFP), and who was killed in the violence.