Today, the planet is full of holocausts every bit as shocking and unthinkable as Vietnam, or what the Jews suffered under the Nazis, or the Russians under Stalin.

Congolese mothers are still watching their 11-year-old sons being thrown into the backs of pickups and carried off to become cold-blooded killers alongside other kidnapped children.

Sudanese girls and women are still being raped in front of their husbands and families, or taken from their homes to be concubines for anonymous soldiers.

Atrocities are happening in Myanmar (formerly Burma), Somalia, Sierra Leone, Colombia, Iraq, Afghanistan and more, with civil wars, rapes, murders, beheadings, false imprisonment and the systematic cutting off of human rights.

We don't often hear the protest songs coming from these places, but they're out there. They describe firsthand accounts of the bloodbaths, the cries for peace and pleas for help - all downloadable in MP3 format or streamed live on YouTube.

In Myanmar, a host of singer-songwriters have taken to informing the world of what's going on there. The Buddhist monks have awakened the world to the people's plight, but political songwriters have been telling us for awhile.

Songs such as "Scarecrow," "War and Peace" and "History's Bride" are sung secretly inside the country, but offer outsiders a view of life under military rule in Myanmar.

Burmese singer-songwriter Mun Awng, who witnessed the 1988 demonstrations that resulted in the public murder of 3,000 civilians, recently joined U2, Avril Lavigne and others to record "For The Lady," a compilation of songs dedicated to the country's democratically elected, but currently imprisoned, female Prime Minister Aung San Suu Kyi.

Awng is in exile, still writing songs, but his countrymen and women can no longer listen to his music or hear his messages.

Rock stars and folk singers who stay in Myanmar have to pass their songs through the federal Press Scrutiny Board that censors out words such as "human rights" and "democracy," and eliminates metaphors that might contain hidden messages.

While many of the country's politically minded musicians have moved into exile, those who have stayed are firmly encouraged to change the content of their songs to reflect pro-government messages. Myanmar superstar Zaw Win Htut now sings government-sponsored propaganda written by a military officer and broadcast on state-run radio. His album "Maha," for example, traces the achievements of an early dynasty of Burmese kings.

In the United States, so many people like to bash the protester. Whether or not we agree or disagree with the message, whether it's Cindy Sheehan or Rush Limbaugh that tweaks our chord, we need to remember and be jumping up and down with elated appreciation that we Americans still can speak our minds, feel what we feel, and write about whatever we want to in a song.

Imagine a world where that is taken away.

• Teri Tibbett is a singer-songwriter and freelance writer living in Juneau.