The Nation
July 21, 2008

Raging Against Rising Internet Repression
By Antony Loewenstein

During the Global Voices Citizen Media Summit 2008–sponsored by
Harvard University and Google in Budapest, Hungary, in late June, and
attended by over 200 bloggers, human rights activists, writers,
journalists, hackers and IT experts from every corner of the
globe–one participant joked that it was worthwhile buying domain
names for dissidents likely to be imprisoned. "Just get them with
‘Free (insert name here).com,’?" he said.

A recent University of Washington report found that 64 people have
been arrested for blogging their political views since 2003. Three
times as many people were arrested for blogging about political issues
in 2007 than in 2006. More than half of the arrests since 2003 were
made in Iran, China and Egypt. Internet censorship has become a cause
with global relevance.

I was invited to present a paper at the two-day event that covered the
research for my forthcoming book, The Blogging Revolution, on the
Internet in repressive regimes, plans by Australian Prime Minister
Kevin Rudd to combat Internet child pornography, and my work with
Amnesty International Australia on its campaign against Chinese web
filtering, Uncensor.

The goal of Global Voices, started in late 2004, is to provide
insights into non-Western nations to Western audiences through
country-specific blogs. The last years have seen its agenda expand to
include a translation service for multiple languages, Global Voices
Lingua , support for minorities in developing nations (the Rising
Voices project) and Voices without Votes, the chance for global
citizens to comment on the 2008 US presidential election campaign in
every country except America.

The Budapest summit featured bloggers and activists from places as
diverse as Madagascar, India, Belarus, Kenya, Pakistan, Singapore,
Bangladesh, Armenia, Egypt, Iran and China. It was constantly stressed
that although the Internet can’t bring democratic reform on its own–
only citizens of a country have the right to determine a political
system, not outside forces–it is allowing on-the-ground organizations
to challenge corruption, fraudulent elections and police-led torture.
Populations are being empowered.

Although everybody I met came from varied backgrounds, from the elites
to indigenous communities using new technology to find a voice in a
country like Bolivia, the sense of community was palpable. What can an
Australian journalist like myself really understand about democratic
struggles in Iran and Bangladesh? By sharing stories, it soon became
clear that many speakers related to others on the opposite side of the
globe. Tools such as YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, blogs, e-mail,
FeedBurner and text messaging were common denominators used by a
minority online community to challenge state-run, media lies.

Nobody talked about revolution or massive social change, but rather
the ability to become engaged in a process usually reserved for an
unelected class. In Morocco, for example, bloggers filmed corrupt
policemen taking bribes and posted them on YouTube. "Targuist Sniper"
inspired many others to act similarly, and the short videos have been
watched millions of times. One female Egyptian blogger posted photos
of police torture by tagging her entries with the names of the accused
officials. Some of this evidence was used in a court of law. Two close
US allies were forced to publicly respond to internal pressure.

Numerous sessions revealed insights into societies all too easily
categorized as oppressive. Iranian exile Hamid Tehrani revealed that
the regime, now with one of the most effective web-filtering systems
outside of China, bans many anti-George W. Bush sites such as Juan
Cole’s Informed Comment and The Huffington Post but allows a neocon
and prowar site such as Pajamas Media to remain uncensored. It was a
typically illogical move.

Only last week Iranian members of parliament announced a draft bill
that aims to "toughen punishment for disturbing mental security in
society." The text of the bill would add "establishing websites and
weblogs promoting corruption, prostitution and apostasy" to the list
of crimes punishable by execution.

The perception of the Internet in various countries remains troubling.
Singaporean blogger Au Wai Pang said that the tool is "free" in his
country, "but people behave like it is not." Self-censorship is a key
barrier to open debate. Au reminded the Budapest audience that
technology isn’t always the answer to censorship issues. "How do you
change people’s minds," he asked, "[for] many who don’t believe in a
society with free speech?" Nothing beats face-to-face interaction, but
the web has become a space where citizens can voice their opinions and
have them respected often for the first time.

A number of prominent Kenyan bloggers, including Ory Okolloh and Daudi
Were, discussed the role of new technology in the aftermath of the
stolen election in late 2007. With only 7-10 percent web penetration
in the country, bloggers on election day woke up early to film people
waiting patiently in line to vote. Some were even embedded with
foreign observers and could immediately report, via SMS and Twitter,
irregularities in the counting process. International support in the
Diaspora was crucial to highlight this relatively stable nation
descend into ethnic chaos.

Blogger Luis Carlos Diaz, from Venezuela, debunked many of the Western
myths about President Hugo Chávez. "The problem is we have too much
petroleum," Diaz lamented. Although critical of many of his policies,
Diaz said that Chávez was a democratically elected leader who wasn’t
quashing freedom of speech. "Voting is a sport in Venezuela," he said.
To remain awake during the weekly eight-hour diatribes by Chávez on
state television, bloggers were providing an alternative perspective
on issues that matter to average citizens, such as poverty, housing
and education. Diaz said he’d recently spoken to workers whose job is
to transcribe Chávez’s speeches. They usually last around 3,000 pages
every week.

Unsurprisingly, China featured prominently in the sessions. Rebecca
MacKinnon, former CNN journalist and now academic in Hong Kong,
stressed that debate had to progress past who is more "brainwashed,"
Western or Chinese audiences. One of the key translators of Chinese
blog posts for Global Voices, John Kennedy, challenged his audience by
asking whether the growing Western anger against the Chinese people
was justified. Was nationalism as great an influence as claimed? Was
self-determination for Tibet so unacceptable in the motherland? Are
Chinese netizens any more thin-skinned than Westerners when attacked
online for their opinions?

Despite these valid questions, one of China’s leading dissidents,
Isaac Mao, wished that the Chinese mob mentality online on issues of
national importance wasn’t so strong. He stressed that although the
concept of freedom of speech is paramount in the West, many other
societies place greater emphasis on the rule of law and fighting
corruption.

Mao, who launched Digital Nomads to host hundreds of independent blogs
away from prying authoritarian rule, feared citizens in prosperous,
Western citizens rarely understood the "crimes of omission" in their
own societies. "They don’t get why the non-Western world wants to talk
about issues that the Western largely ignores," Mao said, "such as
poverty and environmental degradation." A major theme of the event was
highlighted. Too few bloggers in the West were bridging the
information gap between different societies and preferred to preach
rather than listen.

The role of blogs in China is more than simply reacting to perceived
Western slights. Instead, many netizens may not be calling for the
dissolution of the Communist Party or planning a revolution, but
they’re been given far more freedoms today than five years ago.
Mirroring what I found during my research in China last year, very few
Chinese bloggers appear upset with the excessive filtering (though
some are unaware what they’re missing out on.) This doesn’t mean,
however, that the apparent blocking of parts of Facebook isn’t
annoying for many users or the creeping Olympic crackdown.

It was encouraging to hear from IT insiders that many employees of
companies such as Google and Yahoo feel distinctly uncomfortable with
the role their companies play in a country such as China and regularly
leak material about their actions anonymously and develop tools to
allow an e-mail program such as Gmail to be used securely, away from
the prying eyes of censorious regimes.

The Budapest conference showed yet again that the mainstream media
remains woefully under-prepared and unwilling to cover vast swathes of
the world. Blogging and citizen journalism therefore provides an
essential alternative to the daily obsession in much of our media with
re-printing government and corporate spin as news.

—
oewenstein

From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress