IINNTTEERRNNEETT EENNEEMMIIEESS

12 march 2009Internet Freedom desk

Reporters Without Borders47, rue Vivienne - 75002 Paris

Tél : (33) 1 44 83 84 84 - Fax : (33) 1 45 23 11 51E-mail : internet@rsf.org

Web : www.rsf.org

Inte

rnet

Enn

emie

sThe Internet represents freedom, but not every-where. Under the pretext of protecting morals,national security, religion and ethnic minorities,even the “spiritual cultural and scientific poten-tial of the country”, many countries resort to fil-tering the Web in order to block some content.Governments have no hesitation in allowingtheir citizens only partial connections. Use of theInternet can rest on a tacit agreement: Govern-ments do not make websites inaccessible in ex-change for self-discipline on the part of Internetusers.

The 12 “Internet Enemies” presented in this re-port (Saudi Arabia, Burma, China, Cuba,Egypt, Iran, North Korea, Syria, Tunisia, Turk-menistan, Uzbekistan and Vietnam) have alltransformed the network into an intranet, pre-venting Internet users from obtaining news seenas “undesirable”. All of these countries markthemselves out not just for their capacity to cen-sor news and information online but also fortheir almost systematic repression of Internetusers.

Ten governments which Reporters Without Bor-ders has placed under its own “surveillance”,still alternate between censorship and harass-ment of Internet users.

But is blocking of news online still effective?Through experience and thanks to their techni-cal knowledge, Internet users have learned toget round some censorship installed on the Webby their governments. In countries where accessto news is prized, it is not unusual to find soft-ware to defeat online censorship installed oncomputers in cybercafés, and also managerswilling to put them to use if need be. Internet ex-perts belonging to some of the most recognisedinstitutions constantly create and fine-tune soft-ware versions so as to adapt them to the realityof the virtual world and to ensure that news isaccessible to all.

Even major Internet sector companies, who co-operate either willingly or unwillingly with cen-sorship within the countries of the “Internetenemies”, agreed a compromise at the end of2008. By signing the Global Network Initiative,the US firms Google, Yahoo! and Microsoft pub-licly said that they wanted to respect their cus-tomers' freedom of expression worldwide. Howmuch they may in reality defy the demands ofauthorities in countries to which they provideservices remains to be seen. But it will no longerbe as easy for governments of these countriesto obtain confidential information about their cit-izens.

But for now, at least 69 people are behind barsfor having expressed themselves freely online.

Australia and South Korea: democracies“under surveillance”.

The Australian parliament in January 2008 ex-amined a draft law requiring service providers tosystematically provide two connections perhousehold, one for adults and the other for chil-dren, both of them submitted to strict, andabove all secret, filtering. This draft was put for-ward against a background in which anti-terrorlegislation is already allowing serious inroadsinto the confidentiality of private correspon-dence. Since 2001, the law has allowed anagency independent of the government to inter-cept all suspect email and to carry out inde-pendent investigations, including in the absenceof any prior judicial authorisation.

South Korea, one of the world’s most connectedcountries, also has recourse to some dispropor-tionate measures to regulate the Net. A bloggerwas arrested on 7 January 2009 for having af-fected “financial exchanges in the markets” aswell as the “credibility of the nation” because ofarticles he posted on one of the country’sbiggest discussion forums. He is still being heldin detention.

A participatory censorship

The most technically advanced repressiveregimes know it well: playing the online censor-ship card means taking the risk of coming upagainst experts determined to develop the toolsto guarantee access to news despite everything.Most of the regions do not have the means tojoin an endless technological struggle. So, in the face of the fad for social networkingsites such as Facebook, Twitter and other onlineexchange platforms like the Arabic-languageMaktoob and the Russian language LiveJournal,censorship operates through a battle of com-ments.

For example, in a bid to limit online criticism dur-ing the Beijing Olympics in August 2008, thegovernment paid some Internet users to leavepro-government comments on the spaces re-served for online discussion where debateswere being held. Called the “Five cents” – anironic reference to the money paid for non spon-taneous comments, they contributed to the ma-nipulation of news and information. But thereare other ways of manipulating online information.

2

Inte

rnet

Enn

emie

sDuring the Israeli offensive in Gaza in January2009, hackers, chiefly Moroccans, Lebanese,Turks and Iranians launched hundreds of at-tacks against Israeli websites, targeting nearlyWeb 10,000 pages with the domain name

“.co.il”. Since the conflict ended, Israelis havehit back. An army of bloggers have been bom-barding the Net with the views of the Jewishstate.

3

Inte

rnet

Enn

emie

sBurma

Domain name : .mmPopulation : 47, 758,181Internet-users : 40,000Population : 27,601,038Internet-users : 6,200,000Average cost of one hour’s connection in acybercafé : 20 centimes (euro)Average monthly salary : about 40 eurosNumber of private service providers : 0Number of public service providers : 2Number of imprisoned bloggers : 2

Burma has one of the lowest Internet pene-tration rates in the world. However, its usersare among the most threatened. Going online is itself seen as a dissident act.

Only 40,000 people connect to the Internet,mostly in cybercafés in the cities.For most of the country, the band-width is barely higher than an indi-vidual ADSL connection in Europe.Downloading a single text can takean hour. With fewer than two usersfor 1,000 residents, Burma is prob-ably one of the least connectedcountries in the world. In addition,service providers offer prohibitive prices formembership (an average of 25 euros a month).

Despite all this, Internet access has expandedsince 2003 with the opening of the first cyber-cafés in Rangoon. Today, there are more than200 in the capital. Moreover, the Burmese al-phabet sits ill with the most recent softwareadaptations and it is often necessary to under-stand English to go online. Added to all this isthe fact that laws relating to electronic commu-nications and the dissemination of news onlineare among the most dissuasive in the world, ex-posing Internet-users to very harsh prison sen-tences. In the light of the narrowness of thenetwork and the absence of any private serviceprovider, the military regime has no difficulty inimposing restrictions.

Burma’s media landscape is monolithic: it is en-tirely controlled by the state. The only independ-ent sources of news are exiled media and theBurmese services of the BBC, Radio Free Asia,Voice of America and the Democratic Voice ofBurma.

The Internet was introduced in Burma in 1997,but access to the network by individuals wasonly permitted in 2000. The government feared

losing its total control of this space. There aretwo service providers, MPT and Bagan Cy-bertech. The first of these belongs to the stateand the second is hosted by the services of thePrime Minister.

Internet-users are officially banned from usingmessaging services apart from those providedby the government. However, computers in cy-bercafés frequently boast proxies for gettinground censorship and to allow use of Yahoo!,Gmail and Hotmail. Currently, 0.1% of Burmeseconnect to the Internet inside the country. Gov-ernment authorisation is required to get an In-ternet connection at home.

Rules that thwart freedom of expression

The Internet is regulated by the law on televisionand video and the Electronic Act, dating from

1996, that bans the import, posses-sion and use of a modem without of-ficial permission, under threat of a15-year prison sentence for “damag-ing state security, national unity, cul-ture, the national economy and lawand order”.

A total of 14 journalists and two blog-gers are currently in prison in Burma. The ownerof two Rangoon cybercafés, Nay Phone Latt(http://www.nayphonelatt.net/), aged 28, whowas arrested on 29 January 2008, is due toleave prison in 2020. He was sentenced underthe Electronic Act for possessing a film viewedas “subversive”. The comedian Zarganar wassentenced to 35 years in prison under the Elec-tronic Act, after posting articles on the Internetcriticising the authorities’ management of hu-manitarian aid donated by the internationalcommunity following Cyclone Nargis. His blog(http://zarganar-windoor.blogspot.com/) is oneof Burma’s most popular websites in terms ofhits from within the country.

Since 2006, cybercafés have had to be ap-proved as “public Internet access points”. Thisobliges managers of cybercafés to carry outscreen captures of each computer every fiveminutes. They must also be able to provide theidentity card number of each user, along withtheir telephone number and their address eachtime they connect, if the regime requires it.

Since February 2008, the Censorship Bureauhas ordered a score of newspapers to ensurethe front page of their printed edition is exactly

4

Inte

rnet

Enn

emie

sthe same as that on their website. They can onlypost online what has already appeared in thepaper version, under threat of closure of thewebsite. These steps have been taken againstthe weeklies Weekly Eleven (http://www.week-lyeleven.com/), 7 Days News(http://www.planet.com.mm/news/), MyanmarTimes (http://www.myanmar.com/myanmar-times/), Flower News (http://www.myanmar-visa.com/flowernews/index.htm), Yangon Times(http://www.theyangontimes.com/), and themonthlies Popular, Action Times, Snapshot, Yati,Tharapu and Fashion Image.

No news must be sent abroad

The harsh jail sentence against Zarganar waschiefly due to the fact that he had spoken to for-eign media, particularly the BBCWorld Service,about delays on the part of the military authori-ties in providing assistance to the victims of cy-clone Nargis. The regime takes good care toshut down any source of information whenBurma is at the centre of the news, as happenedin September 2007, for the first since 1988,when Buddhist monks withdrew their supportform the regime and demonstrated against thedictatorship of General Than Shwe. The author-ities then cracked down, isolating the countryfrom the international scene by making it impos-sible for information to be sent abroad online.

As the first anniversary of the “Saffron Revolu-tion” approached, four news websites basedabroad were regularly targeted in denial-of-service attacks. These attacks consist of simul-taneously sending thousands of requests to aserver in order to block it. The magazine The Ir-rawaddy (http://www.irrawaddy.org), as well asthe online daily The New Era (http://www.khit-pyaing.org), whose websites are hosted in Thai-

land, were targets of cyber-attack in September2008, preventing them from putting out news.Despite the creation of a mirror site (http://their-rawaddy.blogspot.com), The Irrawaddy saw itshits reduced by half in three months.

The exiled media website the Democratic Voiceof Burma, as well as Mizzima, devoted to newson Burma suffered the same type of attackssince August 2008. These were stepped up be-tween 15 and 22 September, during which timeboth sites were equally inaccessible outside thecountry.

At the start of October 2008, the capital’s cyber-cafés were inspected by soldiers who ques-tioned clients about the sites they were lookingat as well as the people with whom they were incontact online. According to their owners, theconnections speeds were considerably re-duced, making downloading photos and videosvirtually impossible.

More information :

http://www.dvb.no/ (Democratic Voice ofBurma): Burmese media based in Norway.http://www.bma-online.org/ (Burma media as-sociation): independent organisation founded byBurmese journalists and writers in January 2001to defend freedom of expression in Burma,member of a network of partner organisationsof Reporters Without Borders.http://www.burmanet.org: Burmanet Newshttp://www.irrawaddy.org: website of exiled op-position magazine The Irrawaddy.http://jotman.blogspot.com/: news blog on thecountry and international news.ht tp : / /www.b lc-burma.org/html /myan-mar%20law/lr_e_ml96_08.html : the 1996law regulating the Burmese Internet.

5

Inte

rnet

Enn

emie

sChina

Domain name : .cnPopulation : 1,321,290 000Internet users : 300,000,000Average cost of an hour’s connection in a cy-bercafé : about 1.50 eurosAverage monthly salary : about 170 euros(People’s Bank of China)Number of private access providers : figurenot availableNumber of public service providers : figurenot availableNumber of cyber-dissidents imprisoned : 49

The Chinese government has the sorry dis-tinction of leading the world in repression ofthe Internet. With the world’s largest numberof Internet users, its censorship mechanismsare among the world’s most blatant. How-ever, the authorities are rarely caught nap-ping on the content of articlesposted online.

The Beijing Olympics were the oc-casion, under pressure from themedia, for websites to be un-blocked so that journalists couldhave access to news worldwide.However, it was especially theEnglish versions of Wikipedia, YouTube andBlogspot that were made accessible. The Chi-nese versions of these sites remained blockedand most foreign-based Chinese news websitesare still inaccessible.

Nearly 40,000 employees of the state and theparty monitor files circulating on the Internet.Since it was introduced into the country in 1987,the authorities have controlled the informationavailable through their expertise on the Web. Forexample, the largest blog platform used in thecountry is monitored by the information ministry.Since all the blogs on this platform are hosted inChina, the government can easily control themif they consider their content to be contrary tothe Party’s principles. In 2008, nearly 3,000news websites were made inaccessible withinthe country.

The censorship system is highly organised. TheInformation Bureau of the Council of State andthe Publicity Department (formerly the Propa-ganda Department) are the main instruments ofcensorship. They tirelessly send instructions towebsites. One such example: “The newspaperMinzhu yu Fazhi Shibao (Democracy and Legal

Times) is using unregulated sources of informa-tion. We ask you therefore not to use articlesoriginating with this newspaper. Websites whichhave reproduced them are asked to delete themimmediately. Please reply to this message”. Thisorder was sent to websites on 8 May 2006 byFan Tao, deputy director of the Internet newsmanagement bureau in Beijing.

The government filters news through the use ofkey words. These “banned” words can some-times be replaced by asterisks and controlledby moderators before they are posted online.For example, all the words associated with thepro-democracy movement, bloodily suppressedby the authorities, on Tiananmen Square in 1989are prohibited on the network: “1989.6.4”, “stu-dent wave of 89”, “student movement of 89”,“unrest”, “riots”, “massacres”, “rebellion” andso on. Internet users tend to use signs such as“ “, “ / “, “ \ “, between the words to avoid cen-

sorship, but websites have installednew filters that can detect thesecodes. Websites even pick uphomonyms and synonyms. There aretoday around 400-500 banned keywords relating to the events of 4June 1989.

The information ministry launched amajor filtering campaign on 5 January 2009, in abid to counter pornography. The minister urgedall Internet actors to redouble their vigilance oncontent of websites to which they allowed ac-cess. The authorities particularly asked hostsand access providers to regulate online publica-tions themselves, which the state enterprisesdid. But among the blocked websites were theNew York Times and the political blog portal Bul-log (http://www.bullog.cn), because this one“posts a huge amount of negative news in thepolitical field”, the information ministry said.

A “Made in China” Internet that mistrusts allcompetition

Control exercised by the Chinese CommunistParty is eased greatly by the fact that it is serv-ices provided by Chinese companies that attractthe use, ahead of Yahoo! and Google, the most-used search engine is Baidu.cn, which makesup 60% of searches (20% for Google) andscrupulously filters “subversive” content. Onsubjects such as the “Tiananmen massacre” or“Charter 08” the following message appears:“Some results are not displayed according tolaws, rules and politics”.

6

Inte

rnet

Enn

emie

sThe most used blog platform is Sina, which wasthe first to obtain a government licence to postnews. It is subjected to a self-discipline pact im-posed by the Internet Society of China (ISC), af-filiated to the Chinese ministry of industry andinformation, in August 2007. The pact “encour-ages” registration of the identity of clients beforeposting their articles and keeping their personalinformation. The judicial authorities effectivelyhave a monopoly on the closure of certain web-sites.

Far from easing the pressure, the governmenthas issued new regulations that came into forcein January 2008, forcing websites to obtain ad-vance permission from the government.

Foreign Internet sector companies are alsobeing brought to heel. The Google search en-gine google.cn, has been censored since 2004.Yahoo! was pushed into denunciation during theriots that shook Tibet in March 2008 and itposted portraits of four Tibetan demonstratorsalongside an appeal for witnesses. Shortly af-terwards, one of the demonstrators gave himselfup and another was arrested after being de-nounced. The same goes for the companySkype which, following an agreement with Chi-nese firm TOM, allows the authorities to inter-cept its communications.

Online information in defiance of the author-ities

According to the China Internet Network Infor-mation Center (Cnnic), the symbolic bar of 300million Internet users was passed in January2009. One quarter of these have their own blog.Despite “preventive” control of the flow of infor-mation, a space for expression does exist forChinese Internet users. Individuals haveachieved prominence thanks to their online workas “citizen journalists”. The blogger ZhouShuguang, nicknamed Zola, has won the con-fidence of his readers by covering social issues.His website, which is not censored inside thecountry, has become a reference in China. Theblogger, who has become the spokesman forthe conditions of Chinese workers, is howeverwatched by the local authorities who, for exam-ple, banned him from going to Beijing during theOlympics. He is also unable to leave the coun-try.

Currently, 49 cyber-dissidents and bloggers arebehind bars, most of them for “revealing state

secrets abroad”. And 2009 is a test year for thecirculation of news online. Two historic anniver-saries are coming up this year: the 50th anniver-sary of the uprising of the Tibetan people andthe 20th anniversary of the Tiananmen revolt. Acrackdown has already begun to prevent thingsgetting out of hand. The renowned human rightsdefender Liu Xiaobo was arrested on 8 Decem-ber 2008 for posting an article online based onthe 1977 Charter of Czechoslovak dissidents.More than 300 intellectuals and human rightsactivists were the original signatories of “Charter08”, which calls for democratic reform and re-spect for basic freedoms. Liu Xiaobo is stillawaiting trial.

Three subjects were widely followed and dis-cussed by Internet users in 2008 and 2009: theorganisation of the Beijing Olympics in August2008, the Sichuan earthquake in May 2008 andthe scandal of the contaminated milk sold by theSanlu factory, which sickened 12,900 babies,two of whom died.

The Beijing Olympics in August 2008, focusedinternational attention on China. Militants tookadvantage of the opportunity to repeat their de-mands. Hu Jia was one of these, calling fordemocratic reform. He was arrested in Decem-ber 2007 and sentenced to three and a halfyears in prison for “incitement to subversion ofstate power” on 3 April 2008. The Internet ac-tivist used his blog to condemn repression ofhuman rights defenders by the Chinese regime.

Internet users criticised the distribution of aidafter the Sichuan earthquake and called for anational mobilisation. One of them, Huang Qi,has been held since 10 June 2008 in theSichuan capital of Chengdu for posting articleson his website www.64tianwang.com condemn-ing the poor management of international aid bythe local authorities.

The scandal of the contaminated milk at theSanlu factory, broke on 14 September 2008.However, a journalist on the magazine NanfangZhoumo (Southern Weekly) turned out to havehad most of the information about it since July2008. If he had been authorised to reveal the in-formation as soon as it was known, the cata-strophic health consequences of this foodpoisoning – nearly 13,000 children affected andat least two deaths – could have been verymuch reduced. But for reasons connected withChina’s image, the information was officially cen-

7

Inte

rnet

Enn

emie

s-sored before and during the Olympic Games.The government sent the media written censor-ship instructions, including Article 8 that said“any subject linked to food safety, such as min-eral water being a source of cancer cannot bepublished”.

More information :

http://cmp.hku.hk/: website of the Study centrefor Journalism and Media at Hong Kong Univer-sity (English).

http://boxun.us/news/publish/ (Boxun): newswebsite on China (English and Mandarin).http://crd-net.org: website of Chinese HumanRights Defenders (English and Mandarin).http://www.hrichina.org/: website of HumanRights in China (English).http://www.xinhuanet.com : official Xinhua newsagency (English, Mandarin).http://sirc.blogspot.com : blog on the Internet inAsia (English).http://blog.sina.com.cn/xujinglei : blog of Chi-nese star Xu Jinglei, the most popular in thecountry (Mandarin).

8

Inte

rnet

Enn

emie

sCuba

Domain name : .cuPopulation : 11,200,000 Internet users : 1,310,000 Average cost of one hour’s connection in acybercafé : 1.20 euro for the national network -4 euros for international.Average monthly salary : 13 eurosNumber of private access providers : 0Number of public access providers : 2Number of cyber-dissidents imprisoned : 0

Cuban Internet users can now connect to theinternational network but at a crippling price.The Raul Castro government’s promise in2008 to put an end to “excessive prohibi-tions” has very far from been kept.

Since May 2008, Cuban citizens have been al-lowed to use Internet connections in tourist ho-tels. They can look at foreign websites that arenot filtered by the authorities. But, for the minis-ter of information science andcommunications, Boris Moreno,“The use of the Internet [mustserve] to defend the Revolutionand the principles in which [Cuba]has believed for years”.

The network is in fact closelymonitored by the Cuban Supervi-sion and Control Agency which comes underthe information ministry. This body awards li-cences, fixes prices and connection possibili-ties. In addition, the island only has one Internetservice provider, ETEC SA, that offers one of theworld’s most restricted networks. Cybercafésare few and far between.

The island should be connected to the networkbetween now and 2010 thanks to a fibre opticcable via Venezuela, to get round the embargoimposed by the USA since 1962. Chinese com-pany Huawei has financed the connection forthe west of the island at a level of 40% but theseworks will not allow very significant web access.

The island with two networks

The Cuban Internet is divided into two networks.The “national” network only allows access togovernment websites and a .cu email address,carefully controlled by the authorities so that no“subversive” message gets on to it. This “col-lective” connection is provided free to universi-ties and doctors for example. For others, a

connection is three times cheaper than the interna-tional network.

Until May, the international network was re-served for foreigners in Cuba, who could get ac-cess to it from hotels to which Cubans weredenied access. The international network how-ever remains one of the most difficult to access,failing any means of getting round censorship.Search engines Yahoo! and Google are for ex-ample inaccessible because of the US embargoon the island. If one types “google.fr”, one isredirected to the pages of the official Cubannewspaper (Granma) or of the state newsagency Prensa Latina. But the information avail-able on this network has also been selected bythe Cuban government, which block access towebsites such as the BBC, Le Monde, andNuevo Herald (Miami-based Spanish-languagedaily).

Government administrative staff are among thevery few privileged people whom the regime al-

lows to connect at no charge to theinternational network using accesscodes they are provided with. Othershave to pay from 6 to 12 dollars anhour, which is a considerable sum fora Cuban citizen.

Profile of a blogger

Despite the access problems, Cuba’s few blog-gers are very active, their posts relayed by theCuban community in the United States, chieflyputting out news about the situation on the is-land.

Since Raul Castro took power on 24 February, itis no longer an offence to own a laptop com-puter or a mobile telephone. However the mar-ket price is a deterrent, often equivalent toseveral months’ salary. Some Cuban bloggersshare access codes and computers to getthemselves heard but they know they are run-ning risks.

In fact, Cuban Internet users face up to 20 yearsin prison if they post an article considered to be“counter-revolutionary” on a foreign-hostedwebsite, and five years if they connect illegallyto the international network. In one such case, in2007, journalist Oscar Sanchez Madan, corre-spondent for Cubanet in Matanzas province,was sentenced to four years in prison “for ten-dency to social dangerousness”. Under this pro-

9

Inte

rnet

Enn

emie

s-vision of Cuban criminal law, any citizen, evenif he has committed no offence, is liable for im-prisonment in the name of the threat he could pose to society. Despite this, a score of citizensregularly post blogs from Cuba, even if they areinaccessible on the island. They are often nottheir own administrators because the network istoo restricted and often too slow.

Since 20 March 2008, the platformDesdecuba.com (www.desdecuba.com), whichincludes an online magazine, Consenso, and sixblogs, has been inaccessible from public con-nection points, although it can be accessedfrom cybercafés and hotels. The few privateconnections used for professional reasons or insecret, take at least 20 minutes to upload a wel-come page, making it impossible to edit com-ments or to moderate them.

Some dissident voices have been targeted bythe authorities. The blogger Yoani Sanchez(www.desdecuba/generacionY), laureate of the

Ortega y Gasset prize in the “digital journalism”category, cannot leave Cuba since the authori-ties refuse to give her a passport. The authori-ties have also used their power of dissuasion tocancel a meeting she tried to organise betweenthe island’s bloggers in December 2008. Herblog is one of the rare breaches in the informa-tion control dam, and has led to her being ac-cused of “illegal activity”.

More information :

http://www.cubanet.org : website of an inde-pendent journalist in Cuba (English and Span-ish).http://www.desdecuba.com/generaciony:(Generacion Y): Yoani Sanchez’s blog in Havana(Spanish).http://www.granma.cu : website of official dailyGranma (French, English, Spanish).http://www.prensa-latina.cu : website of govern-ment news agency (English, Spanish, Russian,Turkish, Italian, Portuguese).

10

Inte

rnet

Enn

emie

sEgypt

Domain name : .egPopulation : 81,713,517 Internet users : 10,532,400Average cost of an hours connection in a cy-bercafé : about 0.15 centimes (euro)Average monthly salary : about 40 eurosNumber of private service providers : 208Number of public service providers : 1Number of imprisoned bloggers : 2

The vitality of the Egyptian blogosphere onthe international scene is far from being anadvantage for the bloggers involved, who areamong the most hounded in the world.

Three bodies run the Egyptian Internet: The In-formation and Decision Support Centre – whichalso advises the authorities in the socio-eco-nomic and political field; The Supreme Councilof Universities – because the net-work was initially developed toease exchange of information inthe academic world - ;as well asTelecom Egypt, which owns one ofthe country’s biggest serviceproviders, TEData.

There are more than 200 privateservice providers. Each public Internet accesspoint can provide the user with a telephonenumber to go online via a modem. Despite thegovernment’s efforts to make computers moreaffordable, the Internet penetration rate remainslow at 12.9%. But ADSL, launched in 2004, isattracting more and more users; there were427,100 in December 2008, twice as many as in2007.

Since the beginning of 2007, the governmenthas stepped up its surveillance of the Web in thename of the fight against terrorism. Officialsmonitor information exchanged online and cy-bercafés have to obtain a licence from thetelecommunications ministry under threat of clo-sure. Some cybercafé owners have said thatthey had been ordered to note and file all theircustomers’ identity card numbers. Large num-bers of people use these cybercafés that areunder surveillance because the charges are somuch lower than that of individual subscriptions,sometimes shared between several users. Theauthorities have since last summer applied reg-ulations to access to the WiFi network, which ishaving a direct impact on freedom of expres-

sion. To connect to the wireless network, a cus-tomer has to provide a mobile phone numberand some personal data such as identity cardnumbers, address and so on, which gives riseto concerns about freedom of speech.

The banner of the state of emergency law

Unlike its Saudi and Syrian neighbours, Egypt isa country in which freedom of speech does stillexist. An independent press has developed andcriticism is permitted.

More than a space for expression, the Web hasbecome a space for action, particularly throughsocial networks, which little by little have startedtaking on the role of trade unions, which werebanned under the state of emergency law. Inforce since 1981, the emergency legislationbanned trade unions from political activities. Butthe most active Internet users call virtual rallies

that can give rise to genuine politicaldemands. One group, created on thesocial networking site Facebook, andboasting more than 65,000 mem-bers, was used to channel protestsin April 2008. Calling on Egyptians to“stay home”, it contributed to a gen-eral strike and one of the largest ex-pressions of unrest in several years.

Since no law regulated this space, the interiorministry in 2002 set up a department responsi-ble for investigating online offences. As a result,security forces arrested around 100 bloggers in2008 for “damaging national security” .

One of the members of the 6 April Facebookgroup, Esraa Abdel Fattah Ahmed spent twoweeks in prison for being a member of thisgroup. Its creator, Ahmed Maher, a 27-year-oldengineer, was detained and beaten for 12 hoursby police in Mahalla, north of Cairo, who wantedto identify the rest of the group. Shortly after-wards, another blogger, Kareem El-Beheiri,spent 73 days in custody in connection with ar-ticles posted on his blog(http://egyworkers.blogspot.com/), dealing withworkers’ rights and official corruption.

Currently, two cyber-dissidents are behind barsbecause of the opinions they have posted on-line. Dia’Eddin Gad, aged 22, was arrested athis home in Kattour, in Gharbiyah province, inthe Nile delta on 6 February 2009. He started ablog in January 2009, “A voice in anger”(http://soutgadeb.blogspot.com), on which he

11

Inte

rnet

Enn

emie

sposted articles criticising the Egyptian govern-ment’s stance on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict,where he presented himself as “an Egyptiancitizen who loves his country and wishes it longlife along with its courageous people”. He isbeing held in an unknown detention centre andthe authorities have not provided any explana-tion.

On 22 February 2007, Abdel Kareem NabilSuleiman, aka “Kareem Amer”, was sen-tenced to three years in prison for “insulting thepresident” and one year for “incitement to ha-tred of Islam”, because of his comments on anInternet forum seen as overly critical of the gov-ernment. He used his blog to regularly con-demn abuses on the part of President HosniMubarak’s government and the country’s high-est religious authorities, in particular the Sunniuniversity of al-Azhar, where he was studyinglaw. He has become a symbol of political re-

pression by the authorities against bloggers inthe Arab world. He was the laureate in thecyber-freedoms category of the 2007 ReportersWithout Borders – Fondation de France prize.

More information :

http://www.idsc.gov.eg/ : site du Centre d’in-formation et de décision (anglais et arabe).http://www.hrinfo.net : site de l’associationHRInfo, défenseur des droits de l’homme dansle monde arabe (anglais et arabe), membre duréseau des organisations partenaires de Re-porters sans frontières.http://www.ise.org.eg : site de la « sociétéégyptienne de l’Internet » (anglais et arabe).http://misrdigital.blogspirit.com/ : blog de WaelAbbas (arabe principalement. Quelques articlesen anglais).http://www.karam903.blogspot.com : blog deKareem Amer (arabe).

12

Inte

rnet

Enn

emie

sIran

Domain name : .irPopulation : 72,769,694Internet users : 23,000,000Average cost of an hour’s connection in a cy-bercafé : 70 centimes (euro)Average monthly salary : 200 to 300 eurosNumber of private service providers : morethan 50Number of public service providers : 1Number of imprisoned cyber-dissidents : 4

Iran leads the way in the Middle East in re-pression of the Internet. According to theTehran prosecutor general’s adviser, the au-thorities blocked five million websites in2008. However the country hasthe region’s most militant blog-gers, four of whom are currentlyin prison.

Internet penetration is above aver-age in the region and in the run-upto presidential elections due on 12June, the authorities appear to bestepping up their control. The main serviceproviders rely on the state-run Iranian Telecom-munications Company (ITC). Despite the exis-tence of private companies, the state remainsthe main actor in the market and instructionsgiven by the Minister of Culture and Islamic Ori-entation, Mohammed Saffar Harandi, are quicklyapplied.

The Iranian parliament’s justice commission on3 November 2008, decided to set up a new fil-tering committee ratifying some articles in thedraft law on “Internet offences”. However, since2003, the government has already had in placea commission dedicated to establishing a black-list of websites seen as “illegal”, includingYouTube, Facebook and Orkut. Moreover, adraft law dating from 2 July 2008, is in theprocess of being adopted, that punishes withthe death penalty “the creation of blogs andwebsites promoting corruption, prostitution andapostasy”.

A special prosecutor’s office makes decisionson censorship and is made up of a team of com-puter specialists. Tehran’s Prosecutor Generalof Tehran, Said Mortazavi, said that it wasplanned that “two special inspectors will worktogether with the security services”. “This pros-ecutor’s office has already dismantled twogroups working against the government on the

Internet,” he added in an interview with the offi-cial news agency Fars. In this way, “The Internetwill be made safe because anti-religious and im-moral activities will be tried there”. The com-mander of the “special forces for moral security”said on 8 February 2009 that “identifyingbanned websites and arresting Internet usersthat go on them is one of [its] responsibilities”. Itwas the first time that the police raised this sub-ject.

Crackdown on political bloggers increases inrun-up to presidential elections

The pro-government press considers the Inter-net to be “subversive”. The authorities in 2008,arrested or questioned 17 bloggers, seven more

than in 2007. More than 38 newswebsites were censored and in therun-up to presidential elections, for-eign news websites are also beingcensored.

The Persian-language website of theGerman media Deutsche Welle(www.dw-world.de/dw/0,,641,00.html)

has been inaccessible since 26 January, as hasthe Persian-language site of Radio France Inter-national (http://www.rfi.fr/actufa/pages/001/ac-cueil.asp) and the Arabic-language site ofal-Arabiya television(http://www.alarabiya.net/persian/). ReportersWithout Borders’ tests carried out on 26 and 27January, found the blocking was affecting thecities of Tehran, Qom, Ahvaz, Karaj, Tabriz,Bousher, Meched and Chiraz. Against this back-ground, Esmail Jafari, editor of the blog RahMardom (Voice of the People -http://www.poutin.blogfa.com), was sentencedon 6 December to five months in prison for hav-ing covered a demonstration in front of the cityprefecture by around 20 workers in Bushehr,south-west Iran, in protest at being sacked, inApril. He was sentenced for “publicity againstthe regime” and “revealing information abroad”.

Since 24 January 2009, several news websitescriticising government policy or belonging to po-tential opponents of the president, MahmoudAhmadinejad, have also been made inaccessi-ble by various service providers. Farda News(www.fardanews.com) and Parsine (www.par-sine.com), both close to Tehran mayor, Mo-hammed Baqer Qalibaf, a rival of MahmoudAhmadinejad, have been closed down. Like-wise, on 22 February two sites were blockedthat supported the candidacy of the reformingex-president Mohammad Khatami to the 12 June

13

Inte

rnet

Enn

emie

spresidential elections. They were Yarinews, aninformation portal for Khatami supporters andthe website Yaari, which collects messages ofsupport for the former president.

Repression not only affects the authors of criti-cal comments about the outgoing president,who is determined to protect his political imageahead of 12 June, Journalist Mojtaba Lotfi wasarrested on 8 October for posting online re-marks by the ayatollah Hossein Ali Montazeri, arenowned opponent of the Supreme Guide ofthe Islamic Revolution, as well as remarks by theayatollah Ali Khamenei, critical of a statementby President Ahmadinejad that Iran was the“world’s freest country” (http://www.amontaz-eri.com/farsi/default.asp). He was sentenced on29 November 2008 to four years in prison andfive years banishment by a special cleric court inthe city of Qom, in the central-north of the coun-try.

The blogger Hossein Derakhshan, who is ofteninvited to speak about the state of the Internet atinternational conferences, was arrested on 1stNovember 2008. One of the reasons for his ar-rest was posting articles about key figures of theShiite faith on his blog (http://www.hoder.com).According to his family, he is still being detained,while an investigation into his case is being held.

Women continue to be targeted for harass-ment by the authorities

Crackdowns on Internet users and the Internetare all the more significant since they are recog-nised internationally for their criticism of the poli-cies of President Ahmadinejad.

The Iranian women’s collective behind the cam-paign, “One million signatures for the abolitionof discriminatory laws against women”,launched in 2005, won the Simone de Beauvoirprize for the freedom of women on 9 January2009, securing themselves a major role in thisstruggle. Posting the collective’s message on-line ensured high visibility on the internationalscene. But on the other side of the coin, it alsoensured unprecedented hounding by the au-thorities. Women bloggers who took part in thiscampaign were summoned to a revolutionarytribunal at least three times in 2009. Five of them(Parvin Ardalan, Jelveh Javaheri, Maryam

Hosseinkhah and Nahid Keshavarz) were sen-tenced to six months in prison for “publishingnews against the regime”. The authorities’ ac-cusations centre on their contributions to theonline newspaper Zanestan (The City of women- http://herlandmag.net/) and Tagir Bary Barbary(Change for equality - http://we-change.org/).

At the end of 2008, Tagir Bary Barbary sufferedits 18th incident of blocking in two years andhttp://www.feministschool.com its eighth. Theblog http://www.zhila.net, run by Jila BaniYaghoub, lawyer and director ofwomeniran.com who regularly defends rights forwomen in Iran, is also inaccessible. BloggerShahnaz Gholami, a member of the Associationof Women Journalists (ARZ), who has been par-ticularly involved in the women’s rights struggle,spent 69 days in custody. This editor of the blogAzar Zan (http://azarwomen.blogfa.com) was ar-rested because the authorities considered that“the articles were damaging to national security”and that “the accused clearly said that she hadposted these articles on her weblog”.

Another sign of deteriorating freedom of expres-sion in Iran came on 21 December when the Cir-cle of Human Rights Defenders, providing freelegal aid to Iran’s journalists and human rightsactivists, founded in Tehran in 2002 by lawyerand Nobel Peace Prize winner, Shirin Ebadi,was closed on the order of the authorities.

More information :

http://www.advarnews.us/ : website of a stu-dent organisation on human rights in Iran (Farsi).http://www.entekhab.org/ : news website of theconservative party (Farsi).http://norooznews.ir/ : news website of the re-formist party (Farsi).http://www.farsnews.com/ : website of the offi-cial news agency (English and Farsi).http://we-change.org/ : Tagir Bary Barbary -(Change to equality - Farsi and English): femi-nist newspaper to which Maryam Hosseinkhahcontributes.http://irwomen.net/ : website of the Associationof Iranian Women (Farsi).http://www.feministschool.com/ : Iranian femi-nist website (Farsi).http://www.humanrights-ir.org : website of theCircle of Human Rights Defenders (Farsi).

14

Inte

rnet

Enn

emie

sNorth Korea

Domain name : .kpPopulation : 23,479,089Internet users : not availableAverage price of an hour’s connection in a cy-bercafé : 6 eurosAverage monthly salary : 20 to 35 eurosNumber of private service providers : 0Number if public service providers : 1Number of imprisoned bloggers : 0

North Korea is a model of control of news andinformation in a country where all forms ofcommunication are at the service of the regime.

The North Korean Internet, which operates like anIntranet, has been available since 2000 and canprovide email, a censored search engine, abrowser and a few news sites that have been care-fully selected by the government. The only avail-able Web pages have been approved by theauthorities and come from thedata banks of the DemocraticPeople’s Republic’s threebiggest libraries (The Grand Peo-ple’s Study House and the Kim Il-sung and Kim Chaekuniversities).The informationavailable is usually connectedwith science and is only accessi-ble to a few handpicked people like academicsand bureaucrats.

To get on the network, cybercafés owners mustobtain permission from the official Korean Com-puter Center (KCC) which controls all online infor-mation and is the service provider. Cybercafésallow use of chat rooms and access to a restrictednetwork. Police made several raids on places offer-ing more open access during the summer of 2007.Since 2004, only foreigners and a few members ofthe government have been able to use a non fil-tered Internet through a satellite link with serversbased in Germany.

An agreement signed in December 2007 on greaterco-operation between the two Koreas allowed ac-cess from 7am and 10pm for South Korean em-ployees on the Kaesung industrial complex northof the demilitarised zone and at the tourist site atMont Kumgang-san (Diamond Mountain), in theeast of the country, until 2008.

Internet at the service of the regime’s propa-ganda

Only two websites are hosted under the domainname “.kp”: the KCC (kcce.kp), which keeps theNorth Korean network under surveillance, and thatof the governmental portal http://www.naenara.kp.But government propaganda is not limited to thesetwo sites. The official news agency, the KoreanCentral New Agency, kcna.co.jp, is supplied byNorth Koreans producing propaganda from Japan.The headlines of the articles reflect Kim-Jong il’sschedule and are put out in English, Russian andSpanish. The same goes for the website Urimin-zokkiri.com, which is devoted to the glory of the“Dear Leader” Kim Il-sung, praising North Korea’s“Juche” (self reliance) ideology and reporting on in-augurations and presents received by Kim-Jong il.

There are a total of 30 websites of this kind andSouth Korean police have identified 43 pro-NorthKorean sites based abroad and which they say are

hostile to South Korea. Constantly vigilantabout his image, Kim Jong-il has in fact setup websites addressed particularly toSouth Koreans. His government on 26January 2008 even accused its southernneighbour of violating its citizens’ right toinformation since sites reporting on KimJong-il’s activities were inaccessible.

Even mobile phone use is regulated

The regime launched its first mobile phone servicein November 2002 but soon banned citizens fromusing it, confining this privilege to the military elite.The regime interrupted the service in 2004 so as to“protect North Koreans from all foreign news” fol-lowing a train accident in Ryongchun on the borderwith China, that left 161 people dead, but also be-cause of the growing black market in mobilephones at the South Korean border. Since then,Pyongyang has retaken control of the phone net-work and on 1st February 2008, the governmentsigned an agreement with an Egyptian companyOrascom Telecom, allowing it to keep a grip on thenetwork for 25 years, under KCC management.Since December 2008, it has cost almost theequivalent of 400 euros to open an account – equalto around ten month’s salary. The black markettherefore still thrives and Chinese mobile phoneshave reached the border, allowing North Korean In-ternet users to go online … on the Chinese Web.

15

Inte

rnet

Enn

emie

sMore information ;

http://www.dailynk.com/english/ : independentNorth Korean daily produced by former North Ko-rean journalists.http://www.uriminzokkiri.com/ : Uriminzokkiri,website dedicated to Kim Jong-il, created by thegovernment.English version:http://www.urimin-zokkiri.com/Newspaper/English/main.php).

http://www.dprkorea.com/ : website promotingtourism.http://www.kcna.co.jp/ : KCNA, official govern-ment news agency.http://nkay.blogsome.com : collaborative humanrights blog.http://www.linkglobal.org/ : Liberty in NorthKorea, human rights organisation (English).

16

Inte

rnet

Enn

emie

sSaudi Arabia

Domain name : .saPopulation : 27,601,038Internet-users : 6,200,000Average cost of one hour’s connection in acybercafé : not availableAverage salary : not availableNumber of private service providers : 22 (of-ficial figure)Number of public service providers : 1Number of imprisoned bloggers : 0

The Saudi authorities have not made officialtheir filtering of websites but they do crackdown on bloggers who challenge theirmorality, whatever the nature of the de-mands. A highly dissuasive policy in a coun-try which does not have a criminal code andwhich arrests authors of “content that is of-fensive or violates the principlesof the Islamic religion and socialnorms”.

In the first such move, Saudi au-thorities in 2008 imprisoned theblogger Fouad al-Farhan for morethan four months for posting onhis blog (http://www.alfarhan.org),an article describing the “advantages” and “dis-advantages” of being a Muslim. Nicknamed “thegodfather”, Fouad al-Farhan is one of the king-dom’s best known bloggers. His arrest was amessage of intimidation to the blogosphere.Saudi authorities arrested the blogger HamoudBen Saleh on 13 January 2009 for having usedhis website to describe his conversion to Chris-tianity. His site, http://christforsaudi.blogspot.com,was added to the list of more than 400,000 thatare officially blocked to “protect Saudi society”.

Net filtering was initially carried out by the Inter-net Service Unit, which comes under the De-partment of Science and Technology at the KingAbdul Aziz University, but was entrusted inMarch 2007 to a specialised commission linkedto the government. This commission steppedup filtering to combat terrorism, fraud, pornog-raphy, defamation and “violation of religious val-ues”. Steps in this regard were taken at the startof 2008 making legally responsible serviceproviders or distributors of computer equipmentwho failed to observe the rules. So, a cybercaféowner is liable to a prison sentence for postingon his premises of an article contrary to these“religious values”.

Easy export of censorship

The reach of the Saudi Internet is such that cen-sorship affecting the kingdom sometimes spillsover to other countries using the same networksto get connected. Since the end of 2008, theSaudi Communications Authority has orderedthe blocking of some websites, because of theircontent dealing with religious matters or morals,making access to them impossible.

As a result, the hosting and web design siteOnix.com has been inaccessible since Decem-ber in Saudi Arabia and in the United Arab Emi-rates, along with the blog of Eve, a Saudiwoman who deals with the rights of women andreligious affairs in the country. Onix.com hostsblogs including that of Ali al-Omary, the firstblind Arab blogger, whose site is highly popularin the region.

But the Saudis also protect their“friends” in the region. In January2008, a Syrian organisation got a siteon the Saudi network that was criti-cising Syria shut down. This verypopular website, Elaph, has howeverbeen accessible again in Saudi Ara-bia since 19 February 2009, without

any explanation from the authorities. The wide-ranging website al-hora (http://al-hora.com/)has been inaccessible since 25 December 2007.It deals with all subjects, from politics to cultureand allows Internet users to post their own com-ments.

Online exchanges are considered to be a factorin immorality. Posting a comment on a websitedeemed “immoral” by the authorities can leadto arrest. This is all the easier since the kingdomdoes not have a written criminal code. Securityservices and courts base judgements on vagueand extremely broad notions of criminal law.

Social networks lead to immorality

Because of this, websites that promote ex-changes between bloggers, such as virtual so-cial networking sites, MySpace and Tagged, areinaccessible in the kingdom. Certain sites allow-ing users to get round online censorship are alsoblocked, as is the Arabic version of the onlineencyclopaedia Wikipedia. Censorship is verybroad, going from websites of political organi-sations to those of non-recognised Islamistmovements, and including any publication with

17

Inte

rnet

Enn

emie

sanything to do with sexuality, so as to “protectcitizens from content that is offensive or violatesthe principles of the Islamic religion and socialnorms”.

In fact, Saudi women, who are not allowed towork in shops or to drive cars, have enthusias-tically taken to the Internet, making up two-thirds of users in 2000. The appearance of blogshas allowed them to express themselves freelyabout their daily lives. That is why sites dealingwith the feminine condition are very widely fil-tered. For example, the site “The voice ofwomen” (http://www.saudiwomen.net) has beenblocked since 15 October 2008 by the SaudiCommunications Authority, which considers itto be contrary to official policy. But censorshipalso bars any consultation of health advice(breast cancer checks for example), because ofthe use of key words.

The blogger Hamoud Ben Saleh is not the onlyvictim of online religious censorship. The blog-ger and poet Rushdie al-Ghadir was arrestedby the Committee for the Propagation of Virtueand the Prevention of Vice (CPVPV) on 4 No-

vember 2008. He was accused of blasphemyover poems posted on his website(http://rushdie.mkatoobblog.com). Al-Ghadirwas interrogated for eight hours by police inDammam in the east of the country and wasforced to promise not to write any more suchpoems. The blogger laid a complaint against theCPVPV the next day.

More information :

http://www.saudihr.org/ : human rights websitein Saudi Arabia (English and Arabic).http://www.gulfissues.net/ : news website onGulf countries (English).http://saudijeans.org/ : blog by a student inRiyadh (English).http://arabictadwin.maktoobblog.com/ : web-site of the Saudi Union of bloggers (Arabic).http://www.saudiblogs.org : aggregator of Saudiblogs (English).http://www.elaph.com : news website on theArab world (Arabic).http://www.menber-alhewar.com : website dis-cussing human rights in Saudi Arabia (censoredin the kingdom).

18

Inte

rnet

Enn

emie

sSyria

Domain name : .syPopulation : 19,747,586Internet users : 2,132,000Average price of an hour’s connection in acybercafé : de 50 centimes (euro)Average monthly salary : about 140 euros inthe public sectorNumber of private access providers : 4Number of public access providers : 2Number of imprisoned bloggers : 1

After China and Vietnam, the Syrian Arab Re-public is one of the world’s most repressivecountries towards Internet users. Five cyber-dissidents are behind bars for having goneonline.

At the outset, the government allowed the mar-ket to develop, using rivalry amongaccess provider competitors tohelp Syrians to get online moreeasily. Six operators have sharedthe market since 2005, STE (TheMinistry of Telecommunications),the state-owned Syrian ComputerSociety (SCS) and four private ac-cess providers Aya, Cec-Sy, ZADand SyriaTech. It is no longer necessary to havea particular professional reason to get an Inter-net connection, just a matter of producing anidentity card or a passport.

Internet use continues to rise in Syria, even ifonly 10% of the population use it. The price ofconnection has gone down and Internet caféshave flourished in poor neighbourhoods, oftenconnected through broadband. There are 40times more users now than in 2004, an upsurgethat has prompted the authorities to controlnews put out online. Surveillance and censor-ship are commonplace on the Syrian Web. TheSyrian Computer Society, the country’s leadingaccess provider, can intercept emails and there-fore monitor dissidents.

However, under the Syrian constitution adoptedin 1973, “every citizen has the right to freely andopenly express opinions, orally, in writing or byany other means of expression [...].The stateguarantees freedom of the press [...] under thelaw” (Article 38).

The Syrian “café”

Arrests linked to online activities are becomingever more frequent – a practice which has even

entered everyday language. Before arresting anInternet user, police officers say they are goingto “drink a coffee”, meaning to interrogatesomeone about their online activities.

At least five cyber-dissidents have been sen-tenced to prison terms of six months to fouryears since 2000. Some, like Mohammad BadiDak al Bab and Homam Hassan Haddad,have been harassed by the authorities for con-tributing to online publications “damaging stateprestige”, under Article 287 of the Syrian crimi-nal code. The first of them was held in prison inAdra (about 20 kilometres north-east of Damas-cus) for six months, from 2 March to 17 Septem-ber 2008. The second, a sociology student atDamascus University, was arrested by the intel-ligence services on 27 January 2009. Nothinghas been heard of him since. He previouslyserved three months in detention after being ar-

rested on 4 May 2008 because of hisonline activities. He is in trouble overcontributions to several editions ofthe magazine Boursates wa Aswak(Stock exchanges and markets) andseveral online publications.

Others, such as Kareem Arabji, anaccountancy graduate from Damas-

cus University and Habib Saleh, a contributorto the censored website Elaph.com(http://www.elaph.com), have been held formore than a year without trial.

Writer and poet Firas Saad was sentenced tofour years in jail on 9 April 2008 for posting“false information” online. He is currently beingheld in Saydnaya prison, north of the capital, ac-cused of damaging “state integrity” and weak-ening “national feeling”. Saad was arrested inNovember 2006 for articles he posted on Syrianwebsites, many of them banned within thecountry. In them, he criticised the “defeatism” ofthe Syrian regime in the Lebanon war of July2006 and called government officials as “thor-oughly corrupt, keeping down rather than de-fending Lebanon”.

Security before service

Telecommunications minister, Amr Salem, de-creed on 25 July 2007 that website ownersshould keep personal details of authors of arti-cles and comments. The following month hesent a circular to the same people telling them tomake public the names of authors and com-mentators contributing to their sites, underthreat of closure of their site. He added that

19

Inte

rnet

Enn

emie

s“there is no need for proof to know that some ar-ticles and comments are false and that some ex-pressions conflict with freedom of speech. Thosewho publicise them are guilty of defamation or vi-olating public morals”.

These measures allowed the authorities to arrestthe blogger Tariq Biassi(http://alzohaly.ektob.com/), on 7 July 2007, forposting an article criticising the Syrian securityservices on an Internet forum. He was sentencedon 11 May 2008, to three years in prison, afterbeing found guilty of “publishing false informa-tion” and “weakening national sentiment” underArticles 285 and 286 of the Syrian criminal code.

The government also does its utmost to limit ex-changes between Internet users. Since then, theauthorities have blocked more than 160 websitesthat are critical of the government. They use a fil-ter system called “Thundercache” to control con-tent, get rid of viruses and prevent downloadingof videos. This is why Skype is censored. The so-cial networking site Facebook is banned on theSyrian Web, along with YouTube and Amazon, of-ficially for fear that Israeli secret agents might in-filtrate it. It is also very difficult to set up a blog inSyria. One of the biggest blog platforms,Blogspot, which is owned by Google, is inacces-sible and the Arabic blog platform, Maktoob, isonly partially available, some pages beingblocked because of their content. Political andreligious subjects are subjected to censorshipand the Kurdish question is also very sensitive.Out of the 162 censored websites, almost a thirdof them relate to the Kurdish community.

However filters put in place by the authorities toblock websites seen as “sensitive” are easy toget round. Internet users often use the“Lebanese server” – a connection via a long dis-tance phone call to a Lebanese access providernot subjected to Syrian restrictions and at noextra cost. But there are also other solutions. Oneexample is the website of human rights defenderMohammad al-Abdallah, Raye7 w mish RaJ3(http://raye7wmishraj3.wordpress.com - I amgoing and not coming back) which has been in-accessible since 13 January 2009, but which isnow readable on a “mirror site” that reproducesits content on the following address:http://rwmr.wordpress.com.

More information

http://www.All4syria.com (Arabic): news websiteon Syria, censored within the country.http://www.arabnews.com (English): news web-site about Arab countries.http://opennet.net/research/profiles/syria (Eng-lish) : tests by the Open Net Initiative on the Syr-ian network.http://www.ya-ashrafe-nnas.blogspot.com (Eng-lish) : “Decentring Damascus”, blog by Razan,Syrian defender of free expression online andone of those behind the campaign for the releaseof Tariq Biasi.http://www.abufares.net/ (English ): architect inTartus. Blocked since April 2006.http://tharwacommunity.typepad.com/whereto_syria/2007/05/post_10.html (Arabic) : article onSyrian filtering.

20

Inte

rnet

Enn

emie

sTunisia

Domain name : .tnPopulation : 10,383,577 Internet users : 2, 800,000Average price of one hour’s connection in a cy-bercafé : between 50 centimes and 1 euroAverage monthly salary : 310 eurosNumber of private access providers : 5Number of public access providers : 7 Number of imprisoned bloggers : 0

The Internet was the target of numbers of at-tacks in 2008 preventing all criticism of theregime from being widely broadcast. But ironi-cally it is the telecommunications sector that isthe motor of the Tunisian economy.

While there are now more than a score of accessproviders, the operator Planet.tn, owned by one ofthe daughters of President Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali,still has the greatest share of the market. The pres-ident continues to runs a very strictpolicy on net filtering and self-censor-ship seems to be the rule amongTunisian bloggers. The Tunisian Inter-net Agency (ATI) is the public regula-tory body, which rents out bandwidthto access providers.

The systematic filtering of opposition websites isalso backed up by an arsenal of instructions. Cy-bercafés are under surveillance and under Tunisianlaw their managers are responsible for the activitiesof their customers and it is sometimes necessary toproduce ID to go online in a café. It is not unusualeither for owners to tell them not to browse somesites that are seen as “subversive”. Instructions tothis effect are displayed on cybercafé walls.

Filtering websites is a widespread practice giventhe popularity of cyberspace with the Tunisian peo-ple. The 281 ‘Publinets’ – public Internet accessspots – are very popular with 18-25 year olds. Thebest known human rights websites as well as themain proxies like Anonymizer(http://www.anonymizer.com/) and Guardster(http://www.guardster.com/) are inaccessible.

Filtering is an everyday problem for Tunisian blog-gers, who held a “day against blog censorship” on4 November 2008. Since the country of Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali is one of the most draconian on theInternet., community information sharing websiteslike Dailymotion, YouTube or Facebook are regularlyblocked because of content critical of the presi-dent’s policies. Emails of some human rights ac-tivists are also filtered.

A success which has its downside

Tunisia is one of North Africa’s most connectedcountries and the success of the Web eases accessto news and information. But some websites are thetargets of computer attacks. Footage posted on theWeb on 10 April 2008, showed the seriousness ofclashes in the mining basin of Gafsa, in the south ofthe country when the authorities put down ademonstration in the cities of Redeyef and AïnMoulares and were one of the rare sources of infor-mation about the events there. On 11 June 2008,the blogs samsoum-us (http://samsoum-us.blogspot.com/2008/06/2eme-mort-virtuelle-je-mhabitue.html), romdhane(http://romdhane.maktoobblog.com) and RoufRouf(http://roufrouf.blogspot.com) were made inacces-sible over posts about clashes in Redeyef in Aprilbetween the army and workers angry at unemploy-ment and food price rises, in which one demonstra-tor was shot dead.

In two years, the news website Tunis-news (http://www.tunisnews.net) suf-fered two computer attacks and its listof articles was destroyed in 2003 and2006. Although Tunisnews does notknow who was behind the attacks, itnoted that they coincided with thepublication of articles critical of theregime.

The year 2008 was one of the blackest in Tunisiawith more than a score of anti-establishment web-sites hacked into or blocked. The blog of Tunisianjournalist Zied el-Heni http://journaliste-tunisien.blogspot.com was blocked in October2008 following the release of Reporters WithoutBorders’ 2008 press freedom index (http://journal-i s te- tun is ien .b logspot .com/2008/10/ rs f -classement-mondial-de-la-libert-de.html), in whichTunisia was ranked 143 out of 173 countries sur-veyed. It is however available on the following ad-dress: http://journaliste-tunisien-2.blogspot.com/.

The news website, Nawaat.org suffered its worstcyber-attack since it was founded, on 16 June2008. Its database was wiped and its home pagechanged. The blogs of human rights defendersSami Ben Gharbia (http://www.kitab.nl/) and As-trubal (http://astrubal.nawaat.org/) were also af-fected. Their blogs are still inaccessible becauseparts of their databases were destroyed. The web-sites have been partially restored since then.

The website of the magazine Kalima(http://www.kalimatunisie.com/) has been inacces-sible since 8 October 2008. It posted a report on

21

Inte

rnet

Enn

emie

sviolent incidents in front of the Tunisian palace ofjustice on 7 October, during which security forcesbeat defendants under the noses of the judges. Themagazine’s editor said she thought the attack wasintended to censor this news.

Emails and personal connections under surveil-lance

Personal details of individuals with Internet sub-scriptions are transmitted monthly to ATI, whichmanages the entire email system in Tunisia. The lawon Posts of 1998 authorises the interception ofelectronic mail that “threatens public order and na-tional security”.

Private connections belonging to some journalistsand opposition figures are cut for “technical rea-sons” or the output is reduced so as to increase thetime it takes to download web pages, restrictingconsultation of websites as a result. Such practicesgradually have a discouraging effect on the blogos-phere, which shows less zeal for criticising govern-ment policies. Some bloggers even give upaltogether. But computer security experts arguethat Internet connections should be individualised,so that two Internet users criticising the regimewould not have the same connection or the time tolook up the same websites. Moreover this connec-

tion would not be specific to a particular computerbut to an individual account and the connection foran individual would remain the same at home as atthe office.

It is not easy for human rights activists to accesstheir emails. Such messages coming from humanrights organisations like the International Associa-tion for the Support of Political Prisoners (AISPP),the news website Tunisnews or that of ReportersWithout Borders are often unreadable. Severalsources say that these emails arrive in their inboxesand it is possible to open them, but the messagesare empty and once opened disappear from theinbox. “It appears to be badly-concealed filtering”one specialist said.

More information :

http://www.kalimatunisie.com : website of the on-line magazine Kalima, critical of the government(French and Arabic).http://tn-blogs.com/ : aggregator of Tunisian blogs(French and Arabic).http://tunisiawatch.rsfblog.org/ : “For a free anddemocratic Tunisia”, website censored in Tunisia.https://www.sesawe.net/ (English): for more infor-mation about “individual connections”.

22

Inte

rnet

Enn

emie

sTurkmenistan

Domain name : .tmPopulation : 5,136,262Internet users : 70,000Average price of one hour’s connection in acybercafé : officially about 6 euros, but 1.50euros on the parallel exchange rateAverage monthly salary : about 150 eurosNumber of private service providers : 0Number of public service providers : 1Number of imprisoned bloggers : 0

Two years after Gurbanguly Berdymukhame-dov came to power, on 14 February 2007, thespectre is fading of former president,Saparmurat Niyazov, the “Turkmenbashi”who turned the country into “Europe’s NorthKorea”. But the Internet remains one of theareas that the new government keeps undertightest control.

Turkmen generally keep themselves informedthrough satellite television. But thegovernment in January 2008 de-cided to forbid satellite dishes andto close companies that soldthem, making the Internet a vitalsource information in such an iso-lated country. The Turkmen serviceof Radio Free Europe is one of thevery few sources of independentnews, but its journalists are regularly threatenedby the authorities.

Progress has been made in access to the net-work, with several cybercafés opening in thecapital, Ashgabat, and in some provinces.Today, there are around 15 across the country,as promised by the new president when he tookoffice. Moreover, access is no longer reservedfor ministries, foreign embassies and interna-tional organisations with a presence in the coun-try. Some businessmen and even ordinaryindividuals can get online.

Repression hidden behind technical obstaclesSince June 2008, private connections are autho-rised by the country’s sole access provider,Turkmen Telekom, which plans to connect 2,000people mostly in the capital. But a private con-nection remains expensive, about 6 euros amonth in a country in which the average salaryis equivalent to around 150 euros. Also, the con-nection is slow and it can take an hour to checkemails.

In addition, cybercafés are open during workinghours and closed on weekends and public hol-idays. And a customer going into a cybercafé forthe first time has to produce a passport andenter personal information on the customers’list.

A WiFi network became available in June 2008,provided by the biggest Russian accessprovider, MTS. It is available in Ashgabat, Balka-nabat and Turkmenbashi, in the west of thecountry. However use of this network is spo-radic because its existence is not well known inTurkmenistan where news and information is notreadily available. The Internet is used by justover 1% of the population and TurkmenTelekom, under state control, operates verystrict filtering.

As websites run by human rights organisationsand those of many news agencies are blocked.Internet users try to get onto these sites by get-ting round censorship but are fearful of the con-

sequences. A cybercafé in theDashoguz region in the north of thecountry, was closed in May 2008after a customer tried to get ontoseveral websites that are banned bythe government.

However, the government did raisehopes that there could be liberalisa-

tion, when on 10 October 2007, EU representa-tive for Common Foreign and Security Policy,Javier Solana, and special central Asia repre-sentative Pierre Morel visited the country. It waseven possible to leave comments on the officialgovernment website www.turkmenistan.gov.tmduring their stay.

But Turkmen Telekom operates in the name of aspecial department linked to the National Secu-rity Committee, a government agency answer-able to the interior ministry. It is this accessprovider that blocks sites and monitors messag-ing services. Turkmen Telekom says that nomessaging account has been created in thecountry since 2002.

More information :

http://www.rferl.org/featuresarchive/country/turkmenistan.htm l: Turkmen service of Radio FreeEurope (English).http://www.eurasianet.org : central Asia newswebsite (English and Russian).

23

Inte

rnet

Enn

emie

s-tive website on Turkmenistan. Neweurasia is acentral Asia blog aggregator.http://http://www.newscentralasia.net/ : US-based news website about Turkmenistan.

http://www.untuk.org : UN website on Turk-menistan, launched on 8 February 2008.http://www.chrono-tm.org : website created bythe “Turkmen initiative for human rights”.

24

Inte

rnet

Enn

emie

sUzbekistan

Domain name : .uzPopulation : 27,780,059Internet users : 2,400,000Average price of an hour’s connection in acybercafé : not availableAverage monthly salary : about 50 eurosNumber of private access providers : 447Number of imprisoned bloggers : 0

Until 2006, more citizens of Uzbekistan hadInternet access than had mobile phones.This is how the political opposition gets outits messages, something that PresidentIslam Karimov wants to prevent.

Islam Karimov, who was re-elected head ofstate on 23 December 2007, exercises very tightcontrol over the Internet. Websites do not haveto register with the authorities, buteverything is centralised and thegovernment blocks access tomost independent sites that criti-cise its policies. State network,UzPak, has been the only one inthe country since 2005 and all ac-cess providers have to connect viathis network. However, a few ofthe 447 private companies that deal in accessare intermittently connected to the Russian net-work.

However, for 17 years, the president has cease-lessly expressed his wish to see citizens ex-pressing themselves freely. The network hastherefore developed and the number of usersnever ceases to grow. But diversity of opinion isnot to be expected. Russian blog platform Live-journal was blocked in February 2009 by Uzbekaccess providers because it posted photos of alocal businessman. But LiveJournal is one ofUzbekistan’s most popular sites and the accessproviders put an end to this censorship once thenews appeared on the Russian Web, whichboasts 38 million Internet users.

Opposition gradually eliminated

In 2005, the journalist and nephew to the presi-dent, Djamshid Karimov, was forcibly admittedto a psychiatric hospital after posting a series ofarticles on the website of the independentUzbek news agency Ferghana.ru focusing oncorruption of the local administration and thestate of the peasantry in the Jizzak region. Hisadmission took place, in October 2006, eventhough the doctors admitted that he was “a

well-balanced man in good health, intelligentand educated”. The same year, the editor of anindependent news website Tribune-uz.info de-cided to suspend its online work after comingunder pressure.

Since 2005, the stance of the foreign ministryhas however been clear: “Uzbekistan does nothave the capacity or the technical knowledge toblock access to the Internet”. However somewebsites figure on the list of “sources of infor-mation that provide destructive news” andthreatening “security of information”, of whichthe government acknowledges the existencebut keeps secret. It generally concerns inde-pendent news websites and those which defendhuman rights. The website registan.net, whichdeals with political questions in central Asia,was blocked without any official reason beinggiven, on 15 March 2007. In July 2006, the web-

sites Neweurasia.net andUzmetronom.org were also made in-accessible by the government.

Since the start of 2008, the websiteuzngo.info, which is not howeverseen by the authorities as an opposi-tion site was also blocked. Its editor,Alexey Dobryin, described it as

“provocation on the part of the authorities”. “Theblocking of the site came just after the victory ofIslam Karimov although he has not ceased toclaim for 17 years that the people want to bepart of a real civil society. It is highly regrettablethat the Communications and InformationAgency of Uzbekistan, which a number of tal-ented and competent people work for, is muchlike George Orwell’s ‘Ministry of Truth’”, he said.The site was one of the most reliable sources ofinformation about civil society.

The law on media freedom, adopted in 2003,imposes a series of restrictions on the circula-tion of news online. Article 4 lays down that “thefreedom to inform the public can be limited inthe name of the protection (...) of the commu-nity’s moral values, national security and thecountry’s spiritual, cultural and scientific poten-tial”. The vague formulation of these principlesleaves wide scope for interpretation and for ex-tensive and abusive censorship. The same istrue of other articles that invoke the “preserva-tion of cultural and historic values” or “socialstability”. An amendment was made to the lawon 15 January 2007, defining websites asmedia, giving the government even greater con-trol over this space.

25

Inte

rnet

Enn

emie

sMore information :

http://uzbekistan.neweurasia.net : collaborativewebsite on Uzbekistan. The website Neweurasiais a platform for central Asian blogs (English,Russian, Uzbek, Kazakh, Tajik, and Kirghiz).http://ferghana.ru : independent news agencyfor countries of central Asia (Russian and Eng-lish).http://www.centrasia.ru : news website on cen-tral Asia (Russian).

http://www.rsf.org/article.php3?id_article=24840 :“Islam Karimov everywhere, elections nowhere!”Reporters Without Borders report on media cov-erage of the 2007 presidential campaign.http://www.eurasianet.org : news websiteEurasianet.http://www.rferl.org/featuresarchive/country/uzbekistan.html : Uzbeck service of Radio Free Eu-rope/ Radio Liberty.http://eng.bir.uz/news : National news agency(Russian, Uzbek, English).

26

Inte

rnet

Enn

emie

sVietnam

Domain name : .vnPopulation : 86,116,559Internet users : 20,669,285 Average price for an hour’s connection in acybercafé : about 2 euros for tourists. Generallyless expensive for Vietnamese nationals.Average monthly salary : about 54 euros amonth (US State Department)Number of private access providers : 8Number of public access providers : 2Number of imprisoned bloggers : 7

Since it has found itself unable to control thecontent of blogs and online expression, Viet-nam has adopted very harsh rules to crackdown on dissident voices.

Since 2002, Vietnam has equipped itself with acyber-police force that filters “sub-versive” content and keeps cyber-cafés under surveillance.Vietnam’s young population hastaken to the Internet with enthusi-asm, whether for computer gamesor getting news. But the masteringof the network by pro-democratmilitants disturbs the authoritiesand political content is regularly blocked underthe auspices of the interior ministry.

“A blog is a personal news page. If a bloggeruses it for general news like the press, he isbreaking the law and will be punished”, DeputyMinister for Information and Communications,Do Quy Doan, said in February 2009 .

Official control of Internet access began on 6June 1996 through the General Direction ofPosts and Telecommunications. Until 19 No-vember 1997, the Internet was limited to emailand local data bases. The state, shareholder inall access providers, follows to the letter Article33 of the 1992 Constitution, under which “thestate must suppress all activities in the fields ofculture and information that harm national inter-ests, destroy the personality, moral values andlifestyle of the Vietnamese people.

Foreign companies urged to co-operate

There are almost a million blogs in Vietnam in apopulation of 85 million. Unlike China, Vietnamhas not created easily controllable blog plat-forms. More than 80% of Vietnam’s Internetusers are hooked up to the American compa-nies Google and Yahoo!, thus with websites

hosted abroad, which the authorities can blockbut cannot shut down. In order to keep control,the government has strengthened already exist-ing laws that ban all forms of online opposition.A decree on Internet management and elec-tronic communications that came into force inSeptember 2008 lays down that “opposition tothe Socialist Republic of Vietnam is forbidden”(Article 6).

The ministry of information and communicationsis also planning to put forward co-operation pro-posals to regulate the content of blogs usingforeign companies’ platforms, under which theywould have to accept to provide informationabout their customers.

In fact, a government notice, Circular n°7, cameinto force on 20 January 2009, which is de-signed to control blogs and their content. It is

now illegal for a blogger to post arti-cles under another identity. Blogscan only carry strictly personal infor-mation (Article 1) and it is banned to“put out press articles, literary worksor other publications banned by thepress law” (Article 2). Moreover,every six months, at the request ofthe authorities, hosts must make a

report on the activities of their customers includ-ing the number of blogs they run and their sta-tistics as well as details of blogs that violaterules established by the host (Article 6).

For Deputy Minister of Information and Commu-nications, Do Quy Doan, “Bloggers are super-vised to prevent them from entering into illegalityor putting out false information: criticising the fa-therland, the work of constructing the country,denigrating and damaging the honour andhuman dignity of an individual, and organisation,dividing the unity of the nation…”.

Seven cyber-dissidents behind bars

The Vietnamese authorities have a very intrusivesurveillance system of people who are critical ofthe regime, the most common method beingphone-tapping. But they have also been usingfiltering of emails and Internet accounts.

A few days before the Olympic torch was due topass through Ho Chi Minh City, on 19 April2008, the journalist and blogger, Nguyen VanDai, better known as Dieu Cay(http://blog.360.yahoo.com/blog-Fqy69mcye-quwJv.MxrhJO_sXCZbkCw--?cq=1), was ar-rested in the city of Dalat, south Vietnam. Five

27

Inte

rnet

Enn

emie

sdays later he was charged with “tax fraud” andsentenced to two and a half years in prison, on4 December. According to his son, Dieu Cayhad been closely watched since his participa-tion at the start of 2008 in demonstrations inHo Chi Minh City in protest against Chinesepolicy in the Paracels and Spratley archipel-ago. Police have harassed his family and hisproperty has been seized. Some of his col-leagues have also regularly been threatenedand arrested. One of them, who asked foranonymity, lost his job on government ordersand fears arrest for “revealing informationabroad with the aim of overthrowing the gov-ernment” for having given interviews to foreignmedia.

Since August 2006, eight people have been ar-rested and sentenced because of their onlineposts, given Vietnam second place on thepodium of online repression, after China. Oneof them, Huyhn Nguyen Dao, was released on15 February 2009 after serving a two-and-a-half-year sentence for “propaganda against theregime”. He has said that challenging rules im-posed by the Hanoi Communist regime hasbeen pursued above all on the Internet. On hisrelease, he told Reporters Without Bordersabout his concerns about cyber-dissidents of“bloc 8406”, who began a hunger strike on 19February 2009 in protest at the prison condi-tions.

Founded in April 2006, “Bloc 8406” is a pro-democracy movement that launched an onlinepetition in 2006 calling for government reforms.In October, the foreign ministry spokesmancalled this group “illegal” and the security serv-ices have relentlessly gone after its mainmovers. In May 2007, six of its members werearrested for “propaganda hostile to the govern-ment” because of remarks on the Web. HuynhNguyen Dao, Le Nguyen Sang and NguyenBac Truyen were sentenced to three, four andtwo and a half years in prison and lawyersNguyen Van Dai and Le Thi Cong Nhan, tofour and three years. Tran Quoc Hien, aged42, spokesman for the United Workers-Farm-ers Organisation (UWFO), was sentenced tofive years in prison at the end of a four-hourtrial. It was the worst crackdown in the countrysince 2002.

More information :

http://clbnbtd.com/ : news website of the “freejournalists’ club” founded by cyber-dissidentDieu Cay (in Vietnamese).http://english.vietnamnet.vn : official daily(English).http://www.bkav.com.vn : website of the BachKoa Centre, the origin of the country’s mostused anti-virus software (Vietnamese).http://www.rfa.org/english/vietnamese : RadioFree Asia, Vietnamese section.

28

Coun

trie

s un

der

surv

eill

ance

Australia

A draft law has been under discussion since2006 that would force all service providers to fil-ter private Internet connections in each home toremove all “inappropriate” content, in the nameof the struggle against child pornography,defamation and authorship rights. Communica-tions Minister, Stephen Conroy,confirmed in January 2008 thatthe law was still planned and thatservice providers would have tocarry out tests before the end ofJune 2009. However, severalpoints remain unclear as to howthe law would be applied. Thelaw does not say who would de-cide that websites were “inappropriate”. It willnot be users who will draw attention to contentto be banned. This list is to remain secret. Nei-ther does the law say how the lists will be drawnup of the websites to be blocked, that remainsecret, or how a website could be taken off oradded to this list.

The draft law was proposed against a back-ground in which anti-terror legislation already al-lows serious inroads into confidentiality ofprivate correspondence. Since 2001, the lawhas allowed the Australian Communications andMedia Authority (ACMA) to intercept any suspi-

cious email and to carry out inde-pendent investigations, including inthe absence of any prior judicial au-thorisation.

Australia is one of the democraciesoperating a strict filtering policy. In1999, an amendment was put to theBroadcasting Services Act, creating

the ACMA, responsible for regulating Internetcontent. This independent agency has thepower to close websites that are the subject ofcomplaints by citizens. Even if it cannot purgethe Internet of all “sensitive” content, it can nonethe less initiate an investigation into the contentof websites, without judicial permission. To dateauthority has blocked 1,300 sites and is target-ing some 10,000 others.

29

Coun

trie

s un

der

surv

eill

ance

Bahrain

Bahrain has one of the region’s highest levels ofInternet penetration, alongside Qatar and theUnited Arab Emirates. However the strugglelaunched by the government against sectarian-ism has limited access to some websites. Theinformation ministry, with whichwebsites have had to register since2005, on 14 January 2009 orderedthe country’s access providers toblock some political and commer-cial content, specifying that it alonehad the power to go back on thedecision.

Since then, websites that provide help in gettinground censorship have also been inaccessible.As a result, Internet users cannot go on to somepages on social networking sites such as Face-book, seen as critical of government policy,along with 66 other websites dealing withhuman rights or politics. The information min-istry however conceded that some blocking didresult in “technical errors”.

In order to fight censorship, Bahraini bloggershave devised their own code of ethics, finalised

on 14 August 2008. This code of conductshould help limit proliferation of incitement to hatred online. The code says, “We reject all writ-ing or allusions containing a sectarian message,incitement to hatred, abuse of freedom of wor-

ship or belief”.

While a new draft law is under dis-cussion allowing the authorities toshut down websites without re-course to the courts, the govern-ment has decided to strengthen itspolicy of holding on to people’s per-sonal details in the name of national

security. Bahrain’s Telecommunications Regula-tory Authority (TRA) on 25 February 2009launched a public charter for Internet regulation.Aimed at operators authorised to provide Inter-net, it will define technical methods needed to“guarantee national security”. Under this char-ter, and also article 78 of the telecommunica-tions law, operators must offer “legal andsecure” Internet access. They also have the ob-ligation to allow “security organs to access thenetwork for national security reasons”. Theyhave until 26 March to make any representa-tions to the authorities.

30

Coun

trie

s un

der

surv

eill

ance

Belarus

The government said on 2 June 2008 that itcould resort to Chinese expertise to block ac-cess to foreign websites likely to have a “bad in-fluence” in Belarus. There is no evidence thatsuch a filtering system has been put in place forthe time being, but the authorities neverthelessdo censor some opposition andnews websites. The website ofRadio Free Europe/Radio Libertycame under some of the most se-rious cyber-attacks since itsfounding between 26 April and 5May 2008. The site promotes “cit-izen journalism” allowing users topost their own photos, film and articles.

Head of the website’s Belarus service, Alexan-der Lukashuk, said the attack was the result ofits live coverage from Minsk of the 22nd anniver-sary of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster, one ofthe major annual demonstrations. Human rightswebsites Charter 97 and Bieloruskii partisan

have also been the target of similar attacks ofunknown origin.

From 10 February 2007, a decree adopted bythe Council of Ministers has made Internet sur-veillance legal, forcing owners of cybercafés and

computer clubs to denounce to po-lice Internet users who go on to “sen-sitive” sites. It also forces them toregister the browsing history on theircomputers over the previous 12months, and to keep the informationavailable for the security forces andthe KGB.

Further, President Alexander Lukashenkosigned a new press law at the beginning of Au-gust that obliges media to comply with a newregistration procedure. It will allow stricter statecontrol of online publications and make it easierfor the authorities to close media down.

31

Coun

trie

s un

der

surv

eill

ance

Eritrea

Eritrea is one of the most recent countries tohave connected to the Internet, which it did in2000. Since then, 42 cybercafés have openedthere, almost all in the capital Asmara and theport city of Massawa.

The company EriTel, which ownsthe network infrastructure in thecountry, works in direct co-opera-tion with the ministries of informa-tion and national development.There are four access providers, li-censed by the information min-istry, who must all use EriTel,which rents them their band width. From thenon, surveillance of the network becomes easy,all the more so since online services such asSkype are inaccessible in Eritrea. The two offi-cial sites, Shabait.com and Shaebia.com, be-longing respectively to the information ministryand to the sole political party, The Popular Frontfor Democracy and Justice (PFDJ), put out theregime’s ultra-nationalist propaganda.

The Eritrean government is known to block or toattempt to block numbers of foreign-hostedwebsites, which is an indication of the size ofthe expatriate community. Webmasters, who are the technical managers of the websites, aresometimes harassed by the authorities.

Eritrea is one of the most closedcountries in terms of news. Inde-pendent media have been removedfrom the landscape. The Internetpenetration rate is extremely low,with less than 2% of the populationgoing online. However, despite theconnection problems, Eritreans canreceive news through the Internet.

Security forces are however present around thecybercafés, as they are everywhere in the city,and have stepped up surveillance of the move-ments and activities of Internet users. Three ofthem were arrested in Asmara on 26 December2008.

32

Inte

rnet

Enn

emie

sMalaysia

During his annual address to Parliament on 17February, King Tuanku Mizan Zainal Abidinvoiced his anxiety about blogs which he called“sources of confusion for citizens”.He also called on bloggers toadopt an “ethical” and “more re-sponsible” approach online.

The country stepped up repressionby applying the Internal SecurityAct (ISA), that provides for deten-tion without trial for two years (Ar-ticle. 8), a sanction that is indefinitely renewable.Renowned blogger Raja Petra Kamaruddin,nicknamed “RPK”, was a victim of this judicialhounding over articles on his website, MalaysiaToday (http://mt.m2day.org/2008/). He is cur-rently under threat of the application of Article 8of the ISA, on the personal orders of interiorminister,

Syed Hamid Albar, who considers him “a threat to national security”. RPK has already been im-prisoned in 2008. This pressure is one of the

means of intimidating critical voicesthat oppose the government andwhich it is not known how long it willremain in force.

The country has a long tradition ofkeeping the media under control.The network is not censored butbloggers are monitored. Almost

63% of the population is connected to the In-ternet and an “inappropriate” use of the Internetcan be grounds for arrest. This happened to thelawyer, P. Uthayakumar, who has been heldsince 13 December 2007 in the Kamunting cen-tre for posting a letter addressed to the Britishgovernment condemning ill-treatment of theHindu minority in Malaysian prisons.

33

Coun

trie

s un

der

surv

eill

ance

South Korea

Unlike North Korea, South Korea has a highlydeveloped Internet sector with 76.1% of SouthKoreans using the network. In the light of thissuccess, the government resorts to dispropor-tionate means of regulation. A blogger nick-named Minerva was arrested on 7January 2009 for affecting “finan-cial exchanges on the market” aswell as “the credibility of the na-tion” because of articles heposted on discussion forumDaum, one of the biggest portalsin the country. One of his predic-tions was the collapse of LehmanBrothers and the fall of the currency, the won.This “president of the economy on the Internet”was charged with “spreading false information”and faces up to five years in prison and a fine of50 million won (27,000 euros).

The “spreading of false information” is a phe-nomenon that exercises the authorities. TwoSouth Korean celebrities committed suicide in2007 after rumours about them circulated on-line. That same year, police recorded 10,000

cases of defamation online, against3,600 in 2004. Kyong-won Na, adeputy in the Grand National Party(GNP) then proposed that blogs andwebsites offering discussion forumsthat had more than 300,000 hits a dayshould clearly identify people postingmessages, asking them their namesand social security numbers. This

project which is still being studied, also seeksto limit the registration capacity of these portalsto 100,000. Since October 2008, nearly 1,000police officers have had the responsibility of in-specting the content of chat-rooms and onlineforums. The largest access portals, Daum andNaver, have decided to get together to resistgovernment attempts to limit criticism.

34

Coun

trie

s un

der

surv

eill

ance

Sri Lanka

Since the escalation of fighting in the country atthe end of 2008, news posted online has in-creasingly become the target of restrictions.The website of Human RightsWatch is regularly inaccessible,which has given rise to a generalfear of Internet censorship, whichuntil now principally hit websitesseen as pro-Tamil Tigers. The de-fence ministry released a report on11 December 2008, on its website,defence.lk, in which it called re-ports on the Sinhala service of the BBC WorldService “diabolical lies”. The BBC journalistsare accused of being accomplices in TamilTiger propaganda, when they raise the plightof civilians living in combat zones.

The news website Lankadissent chose tocease operating on 10 January 2009 for fear of

becoming the target of reprisals. The highlycritical publication employed journalists whohad lost their jobs after the closure of the

newspaper Mawbima, under offi-cial pressure. The experience ofthe website TamilNet served as anexample. In 2005, the website’seditor Dharmeratnam Sivaram“Taraki” was murdered becausehis coverage of the political andmilitary situation was seen as hos-tile by the government. His killers

have not been found and the site is blocked in-side the country. The editor of the site E-tha-lay.org (http://www.ethalaya.org), KumuduChampika Jayawardana, was the target of anambush in 2007 after he became the target forpro-government militia because of articlesposted online.

35

Coun

trie

s un

der

surv

eill

ance

Thailand

As the end of King Bumibol Adulyadej’s reignapproaches, the monarchy has become an evermore sensitive issue. At the start of January2009, the information and communications min-ister announced that the government was goingto invest 500 million baht (1.1 million euros) toput in place a national filtering sys-tem to block websites hostedabroad that could damage themonarchy. Since December 2008,the ministry has decided to stepup the fight against the crime oflese majeste online. More than4,000 websites have beenblocked since the start of 2009.However, official sources say that only 4,800pages have been blocked for this reason sinceMarch 2008.

Under the Cyber Crime Act, adopted in 2007,police can seize computer equipment of peoplesuspected of sending message containing in-sulting or pornographic content. The crime oflese-majeste did not appear in this law. But atthe start of 2009, an amendment was addedproviding for prison sentences for anyone sus-pected of the crime of lese-majeste so as to in-crease sentences in cases of “defamation”,“insult” or “threat to the monarchy”.

Almost a score of people are currently facingcharges of this crime because of their articles

posted online. Internet user Suwicha Thakorwas arrested on 14 January 2009 by the Depart-ment of Special Investigation (DSI), while he wasvisiting friends in the country. The IP address ofhis computer indicated that his home corre-sponded to the place from which commentsabout the king and his entourage had been

posted. He is being held at the KlongPrem prison, even though he deniescharges of the “crime of lese-ma-jeste” against him. Two bail applica-tions have been denied.

Blogger Praya Pichai spent twoweeks in custody, facing proceed-

ings under Article 14 for “defamation” and“damaging national security” at the end of Au-gust 2007 for making comments considered“critical of the monarchy” in an article posted onhis blog (http://www.prachathai.com). The Thaiauthorities dropped charges against him for lackof proof. However, Praya Pichai has been putunder surveillance for ten years and faces prisonif he publishes any further comments about themonarchy.

The crime of lese-majese is punishable by 3 to15 years in prison and any Thai citizen can askfor the opening of an investigation if he suspectsone of his fellow citizens to be guilty of it.

36

Coun

trie

s un

der

surv

eill

ance

United Arab Emirates

The United Arab Emirates is one of the bestconnected countries in the region, alongsideBahrain and Qatar.

The government generally blocks content that“harms Islam”. Pornography,gambling and homosexuality aretaboo subjects on the Internet, butit is not unusual to find websitesmade inaccessible for politicalreasons. Criticism of the govern-ment is also a very sensitive issue.The appeal court in Ras alKhaimah on 20 January 2008quashed all charges against the owner of thewebsite www.majan.net, Muhammad RashedShehhi, who was sued for “defamation” over an“offensive” comment posted on his site by anInternet user. Muhammad Rashed Shehhi hadbeen sentenced on 8 August 2007 to one year inprison and a fine equivalent to 15,000 euros.During his appeal hearing in October, the pros-ecutor had called for a five-month prison sen-tence against him.

The Telecommunications Regulatory Authority(TRA) has called on the national telecommuni-cations company, Etisalat, to block access to allwebsites with an Israeli domain name (.il). Butnot all pro-Israel sites are censored. The

Jerusalem Post (www.jpost.com) is,for example, accessible.

Social networking sites are also tar-geted for censorship, such as Hi5,Facebook, Friendster, and all thosewebsites that host dating servicessuch as Yahoo! Personals andMatch.com.

Some websites are inaccessible because ofSaudi Arabian censorship since the two coun-tries share an information channel. Since thestart of 2008, the Saudi communications author-ity has ordered the closure of some websitesbecause of their content dealing with religiousaffairs or morals. The website on blog hostingand design Onix.com has been inaccessiblesince December. The blog of Eve, a Saudiwoman who cover the rights of women and re-ligious affairs in the country, has suffered thesame fate.

37

Coun

trie

s un

der

surv

eill

ance

Yemen

New is very tightly controlled by the informationministry, which in addition to monitoring the In-ternet, bans several mobile phone news serv-ices, including those by Nass Mobile or BelaQoyod mobile, on the grounds that text mes-sages cannot be properly con-trolled. Service providers preventsome Internet users from gettingaccess to local news sites. Thewebsite Marebpress realised thatits provider was blocking access tousers with a “dial-up” connection.Users with ADSL and ISDN sub-scriptions can get access.

TeleYemen (Y.Net), one of the country’s mainproviders, reserves the right to “report to thecompetent authorities on any use or attempteduse of Y.Net services breaking the law of the Re-public of Yemen”. The conditions of use of Y.Netalso explain that “access to applications thatallow transmission of video and audio files [...]represent an unreasonable use of the Internetnetwork, that can affects its capacity, and is forthis reason, banned”.

Platforms such as Maktoobblog, Youtube, Face-book, Orkut, and Twitter, are however accessi-ble because these rules only apply to websiteshosted within the country. But, since 15 May2008, some Yemeni news websites have not

been accessible, such as that of al-Umma (TheNation), Yemen.net and al Tagheer (TheChange). They have been accused of postingarticles dealing with social unrest and challeng-ing government policy. Opposition websiteshave also been made inaccessible, such as al-

Shoura (http:// www.al-shoura.net)and forums of the Yemenite Council(http://www.al-yemen.org) andYemen-Sound (http://www.yemen-sound.com), which are among themost popular in the country.

The website in support of Egyptianblogger, Kareem Amer, who has been impris-oned for more than a year for using his right offreedom of expression online, has also been in-accessible 28 January. The same applies toYemen.net (http://www.yemenat.net/), after itposted a Human Rights Watch report andvideos dealing with the plight of Yemeni emi-grants who became casualties in a fire in SaudiArabia.

At the same time, the government blocks ac-cess to software designed to get round censorship or “prox-ies”, thus preventing Internet users from obtain-ing news. As in Bahrain, Yemen uses the USfiltering software Websense to select newsabout the country.

38

Coun

trie

s un

der

surv

eill

ance

Zimbabwe

Although it is tightly controlled, the Web is notthe first concern of the government … exceptduring elections. In August 2008, during the re-newal of the mandate of President Robert Mu-gabe, who has been head of state since 1987,the Zimbabwean government levered its powerover journalists, including byhacking into their email accounts.

Two months after the presidentialelections, Justin Mutasa, editor ofthe publicly-owned newspapergroup Zimpapers, revealed that hehad authorised the hacking intohis editors’ private emails with thehelp of software that decrypts passwords. Sixjournalists were from 3 to 15 August subjectedto this heightened surveillance to gauge theirloyalty to the president’s party during the elec-tion campaign. In May 2008, the editor of theZimbabwean Broadcast Corporation (ZBC),Henry Muradzikwa, was ousted from the com-pany, along with seven other journalists for nothaving sufficiently backed Robert Mugabe andhis ruling Zimbabwe African National Union –Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF) during the campaign.

Moreover, the editor of the magazine Umthun-ywa, Bhekinkosi Ncube, was suspended fromAugust to November for publishing a photo ofthe leader of the opposition Movement for Dem-ocratic Change (MDC) of Morgan Tsvangirai,

with the caption “Walile u Tsvangirai”(Tsvangirai refuses to sign) at a timewhen the two parties were discussingpower-sharing after the defeat ofZANU-PF in 29 March 2008 generalelections.

The government has since 2007adopted the Interception of Commu-

nication Act that allows the state to interceptphone calls and email or faxes to “guarantee na-tional security”. The hacking into private infor-mation is not however authorised. JustinMutasa justified his actions, saying that the “ed-itorial lines are not set by the group editor butby the minister of information [...] At the start ofeach mandate, the new minister calls on editorsand tells them what he expects. The editorshave to obey”.

39