Governments in Asia are considered among the world’s worst ”enemies” of internet freedom, as they increasingly censor websites and jail people who express views deemed dangerous online.
Ahead of World Press Freedom Day on Wednesday, experts say countries including China, Vietnam and Nepal are feeling more threatened by cyberspace than ever as internet use booms and their populations increasingly seek information from the worldwide web.
Of a list of 15 ”Enemies of the internet” named by Paris-based rights group Reporters sans Frontières in a report late last year, seven are in Asia, including China, North Korea, Vietnam and Burma.
Experts warn that, with less freedom of information, Asian societies risk seeing more corruption and abuse of government power, while public discontent will grow, leading to more social instability.
”These countries are among the most politically backward countries, that’s why they are afraid of the internet,” said formerly imprisoned Chinese journalist Gao Yu, who won Unesco’s Guillermo Cano World Press Freedom award in 1997.
”They fear the internet will spread Western ideas of freedom and democracy which will lead to an overthrow of their power.”
Employing sophisticated filtering technology, forcing internet cafes to register users and internet service providers to reveal user information, the governments are trying to rein in a medium they realise they must also embrace to spur modernisation and economic growth.
In China, the world’s biggest jailer of journalists, the number of cyber dissidents imprisoned has exceeded the number of reporters locked up.
In 2005, 32 journalists were imprisoned while more than 62 people were jailed for posting their political views online, according to Reporters sans Frontières.
Internet giants such as Yahoo!, Microsoft and Google operating in China have been pressured into censoring their content while rights groups have accused Yahoo! of helping China jail several bloggers who have criticised the government.
Vietnam, which lacks China’s money and technology, has employed internet police to filter out ”subversive” content and spy on cybercafés.
One of the people it threw in jail is Pham Hong Son, who was given a five-year prison term and three years’ house arrest for simply sending an article from the United States State Department website entitled ”What is Democracy” to friends and officials.
Myanmar blocks not only foreign news sites but also web-based e-mail services like Yahoo! and Hotmail and forces internet cafes to monitor their computer users.
North Korea only allows a few thousand privileged people to have access to a heavily-censored version of the internet with sites praising the regime.
In Nepal, despite restoring internet access that was initially cut off when King Gyanendra seized power in February 2005, his regime continued to block opposition publications to try and subdue a people power uprising that recently forced him to relinquish his grip on power.
Meanwhile, other Asian countries which are perceived as more modern and open, including Malaysia, Singapore, South Korea and Thailand remained on Reporters sans Frontières’ ”watch list”.
While these countries have so far respected online freedom, they have also displayed worrying signs of trying to control the internet, the group said.
The Malaysian government’s intimidation of online journalists and bloggers has increased in the past three years, the group said.
It cited a raid on Malaysiakini, the countrys only independent online daily and detention for people who ”spread rumours” online.
In Singapore, a blogger who criticised the country’s university system was forced to shut down his blog last year after official pressure.
South Korea, the fourth most-wired country in the world, excessively filters the internet, blocking pornographic sites as well as publications that supposedly ”disturb public order”, including pro-North Korean sites, the group said.
In Thailand, the government extended its fight against Internet pornography to censoring online news sites as part of Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra’s broader effort to rein in the media, according to the Southeast Asian Press Alliance.
Defamation suits that once targeted newspapers now hit writers who publish online, the press association said.
This tight control over the Internet in Asia has removed an effective check on government powers and will only fuel more political discontent, experts say.
”They’ll only have economic development, but how about political?” said Chinese journalist Gao.
”People will become even more dissatisfied … This will only encourage more people to go online.” – AFP
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