25 March 2009

Internet Enemies

Reporters Without Borders recently issued a report on what it calls “Internet Enemies.” It named 12 countries: Saudi Arabia, Burma, China, Cuba, Egypt, Iran, North Korea, Syria, Tunisia, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan and Vietnam.

The press freedom group says: “All of these countries mark themselves out not just for their capacity to censor news and information online but also for their almost systematic repression of Internet users.”

Of all these countries, Reporters Without Borders casts China as Internet Enemy Number One:

“The Chinese government has the sorry distinction of leading the world in repression of the Internet. With the world’s largest number of Internet users, its censorship mechanisms are among the world’s most blatant. However, the authorities are rarely caught napping on the content of articles posted online.”


This past week, Chinese authorities showed how quickly they can move. After they denounced as a fake a video posted on YouTube that appeared to show police beating Tibetan prisoners, the owners of the popular video-sharing site reported it was being blocked inside China.

3 comments:

Rinchen said...

It is sad that young people in china dont have access to unbiased information and have the wide ranges of choices to actually form an informed opinion.

Anonymous said...

O i´m sorry, What about Mr Rupert Murdoch who own the news and can selectivly choose what news he wants with his topp politician friends?
Talk about cencorship

Sujan Patricia said...

On July 1, the Chinese government will be rolling out censorship software on every new computer sold in the country. The software, called Green Dam Youth Escort.