23 November 2005
ARAB GOVERNMENTS SEEK TO MUZZLE INTERNET DISSENT
Across the Middle East and North Africa, the Internet is spreading rapidly as a means of accessing information, exchanging ideas and expressing opinions, particularly in countries where the press is tightly controlled by governments.
However, governments are moving to stop the spread of ideas and opinions by blocking websites and jailing Internet users, a new report by Human Rights Watch finds.
"False Freedom: Online Censorship in the Middle East and North Africa" documents online censorship in Tunisia, Iran, Syria and Egypt. It finds that governments in these countries have pursued contradictory Internet policies.
On the one hand, they have embraced Internet technologies in order to tap into the global economy. On the other hand, they continue to maintain their well-entrenched monopolies over the flow of information.
In Tunisia, the government has detained individuals who use the Internet to criticise authorities and has blocked websites that publish reports of human rights abuses in the country, says Human Rights Watch.
In Iran, where the reformist press has been virtually shut down, the World Wide Web has become the country's main outlet for exchanging political information and ideas.
Today, there are some 7 million Internet users in Iran, Human Rights Watch notes. In response, the government has jailed dozens of online writers, bloggers and website administrators.
In Egypt, civil society activists and bloggers use the Internet, e-mail and text messages to publicise human rights abuses, organise protests and co-ordinate slogans to chant at protests. According to one estimate, there are some 390 Egyptian blogs as of September 2005.
Authorities have censored several websites and jailed individuals for their online activities. There is evidence that the government has monitored online communications without first obtaining search warrants.
In Syria, authorities have used state-of-emergency laws to censor online information and correspondence. The government restricts the use of basic electronic tools that allow people to send e-mails and build websites. Security forces have held online writers incommunicado and tortured them simply for reporting stories the government did not wish to see told.
The Human Rights Watch report was launched during the World Summit on the Information Society in Tunisia last week, where human rights organisations successfully used the occasion to focus international attention on censorship and other violations in the host country (see http://campaigns.ifex.org/tmg).
Read the full report here: http://www.hrw.org/reports/2005/mena1105/
Visit these links:
- Tunisia Monitoring Group: http://campaigns.ifex.org/tmg
- Arab Network for Human Rights Information: http://www.hrinfo.net/en/
- RSF Handbook for Bloggers: http://www.rsf.org/rubrique.php3?id_rubrique=542
- Blogs, SMS, E-mail: http://www.ojr.org/ojr/stories/050830glaser/
- Manal and Alaa's bit bucket: http://www.manalaa.net/
- Hungry for Internet Freedom in Tunisia: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/4456332.stm
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