SCN: Censorship

[Steve]

x-no-archive: yes

==================


Andrew Stroehlein, head of training, Institute for War and Peace 
Reporting, writes regularly about Internet censorship in 
authoritarian regimes

(Online Journalism Review)---A decade or so ago, it was all clear: 
the Internet was believed to be such a revolutionary new medium, 
so inherently empowering and democratizing, that old authoritarian 
regimes would crumble before it. What we've learned in the 
intervening years is that the Internet does not inevitably lead to 
democracy any more than it inevitably leads to great wealth.  

The idea that the Internet itself is a threat to authoritarian regimes 
was a bit of delusional post-Cold War optimism. It is true that many 
activists and journalists have brought their struggle for democracy, 
the rule of law and freedom of expression to the new medium, but 
they have not been blessed by inevitable victory, and plenty of 
nasty regimes have learned how to co-exist with the Internet in one 
way or another. 

In country after country, the same old struggle goes on: hard-line 
regimes and their opponents remain locked in battle, and the 
Internet has become simply one more forum for their fight.  

Repressive regimes are paranoid by nature. Those in power see 
enemies everywhere and encourage mass paranoia, 
overemphasizing threats to national security in order to justify their 
draconian rule. When early Web-heads equated the Internet with 
inevitable democracy, paranoia-prone regimes were natural 
suckers for the idea.  

"The Web really does scare these regimes," Veronica Forwood 
told me. Forwood is the UK Representative for Reporters without 
Borders, the publisher of the excellent "Enemies of the Internet" 
report, outlining the situation in many regimes around the world, 
"They want to control everything, and the Web seems so nebulous 
and unknowable to them, they are just frightened by it."  

Indeed, many repressive states see the Internet as such a threat 
that they simply ban it altogether. The former regime in Taliban-
controlled Afghanistan and North Korea are two cases of a 
complete ban, though it is known that a few very high-ranking 
ministers in each regime have had access to e-mail at least.  

Another particularly harsh example is Burma. A. Lin Neumann, Asia 
Consultant for the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) and 
author of an excellent recent report on press freedom in Burma, 
explained to me that the military junta in Rangoon effectively 
prevents public Internet access in the country. One needs a permit 
for a modem, and though a few people have them illegally, long-
distance calls for foreign access are prohibitively expensive. The 
tiny number of government-approved e-mail accounts are all 
monitored by censors, and the high price of those accounts again 
keeps most ordinary citizens away in any case.  

Relying on high access costs as a de facto censor is an easy trick 
for regimes, as they generally lord over desperately poor countries. 
As we previously discussed here in OJR, Uzbekistan is a perfect 
example. In true Soviet style, the authorities in Tashkent have set 
up the technical infrastructure so that they have the capability to 
monitor e-mails and Web browsing, but it seems they don't actually 
interfere that much just yet, because they know the price of access 
means that only a tiny fraction of the population are online, an 
insignificant fraction apparently in the authorities' view.  

But an all-out ban and relying on high access costs are hardly the 
only methods of keeping control over online information. Despite 
the theory behind the Internet's built-in anti-censorship 
architecture, official control is actually very possible in practice, 
especially as the regimes run the telecommunications 
infrastructure when the country comes online.  

In Iraq the regime is trying to use the Internet to its own advantage 
while cutting off access to the public. The Internet is accessible 
from some government ministries, but since, like Burma, one needs 
special permission to own a modem, home access is limited to the 
most trusted members of the ruling elite.  

The situation in Cuba is little better. The government allows 
access at approved institutions, including trusted firms and 
universities. Private access at home is nearly non-existent, and the 
government is setting up a Cuba-only intranet for young people, to 
keep their activity corralled in an easily controlled space. The 
overall effect of these efforts, according to a detailed report by the 
Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, is that, "there is 
essentially no legal, commercially available public access to the 
Internet" in Cuba.  

Some repressive regimes, however, realizing that the new 
technology can have some positive benefits for society at large, 
have developed a more sophisticated approach to the Internet, 
attempting to allow widespread access and yet maintain control 
over it. China has tens of millions of Internet users and has easily 
one of the fastest growing online populations in the world. Still, the 
authorities' control points are several. Chinese chatrooms, for 
example, are monitored and comments offensive to the regime are 
removed quickly by the moderators.  

Much more importantly, though, is the Chinese government's ability 
to censor material coming in from outside China. All external 
information runs through government servers, so the authorities 
can and do block outside Web sites they deem potentially 
dangerous. A report by CPJ in January of last year notes that the 
main targets for blocking are Western news sites, Chinese 
dissident sites, Taiwanese media and sites of the banned religious 
group, Falun Gong. 

But the CPJ Report also observed how inconsistent the blocking 
can be, and this point is backed up by this writer's experience. On 
a recent trip to China, I did a little test of my own in an Internet 
cafe: US sites cnn.com and time.com were blocked, but UK sites 
for The Guardian  and The Independent newspapers, both with 
plenty of articles critical of Beijing, were easily accessible.  

It is, however, probably not as random as it appears, and the 
Chinese authorities have blocked a huge number of sites, most 
likely paying more attention to those sites they feel are better 
known to Chinese users. Certainly, the authorities' overall control 
can be in no doubt, exemplified by the fact that their blocking can 
be turned on and off at will: during last October's APEC meeting in 
Shanghai, the Chinese authorities temporarily lifted their blocks of 
some American Web sites as a sop to foreign delegates.  

As CPJ's A. Lin Neumann told me: "Chinese blocking is reasonably 
effective on their part. It takes some determination to get around it, 
and I doubt that many people want to really play the game. Most of 
the students I talked with, quite frankly, were more interested in 
sex, computer games and English proficiency (in that order) than 
they were in politics on the Internet."  

While it's true some editors try to stay one step ahead of the 
blockers by constantly setting up new proxy sites, that kind of cat-
and-mouse routine, forcing the reader to waste time keeping up 
with frequent address changes, only benefits the censors.  

While access to the outside world is significantly limited in China 
through extensive and complex blocking, the authorities have a 
much easier time controlling what is published within China. As in 
many heavy-handed regimes, self-censorship is the key factor in 
China: editors of Web sites inside China know well the limits of 
what is acceptable and what is not, and it only takes a few tough 
arrests and harsh crackdowns to send a clear signal to Web 
journalists and activists everywhere. The infamous persecution of 
online publisher Huang Qi is probably enough to keep most 
Chinese Web editors in line.  

This "let that be a lesson to you all" tactic is as old as man, but 
even with the newest technology it still works -- and is a typical 
ploy even in regimes that are generally considered less repressive 
than China. Umit Ozturk, vice-chair of Amnesty International's 
Journalists' Network, explained to me how this works in Turkey. In 
Turkey, if a Web site publishes something the military-dominated 
state finds unacceptable, the ISP's will receive a quick visit or a 
phone call from someone "suggesting" the immediate removal of 
that site. Failure to do so would be very detrimental to one's health, 
so the ISPs naturally comply.  

When the optimists spoke of inevitable freedom through the 
Internet a few years back, they forgot about such crude and 
effective methods of information control.  

With such personal threats at home, it's not difficult to see why 
some online journalists and activists chose to work in exile. There 
are problems with this approach, obviously -- their online 
information might be blocked at home, many potential readers will 
not be able to afford access to their site and their critics will always 
accuse them of being stooges of foreign governments - but for 
some the benefit of being able to tell the truth outweighs these 
concerns.  

The main problem of running a Web site in exile is maintaining 
local relevance and authenticity when writing from abroad. In the 
worst cases this means either heavily working the phones to your 
contacts on the ground, or, where phone-tapping is a concern, the 
smuggling of documentation out of the country. 

On the face of it, that would seem to be little advancement on the 
tedious and dangerous methods of the Communist-era dissidents. 
Still, when it works, it can bring the only non-regime-sponsored 
information to the outside world and offers a unique eye on closed 
societies. The work of the Revolutionary Association of the Women 
of Afghanistan in Taliban-controlled Afghanistan was certainly one 
of the best examples of such activity the Internet has ever seen.  

In less restrictive situations, the Internet itself is the networking 
tool, and e-mail allows émigré publishing to be current from the 
ground in a way that Iron Curtain dissidents never could be. Even 
then, however, expanding a network of correspondents on the 
ground is not always straightforward, and the specifics of the local 
culture and local regime need to be considered.  

My own Institute for War and Peace Reporting is familiar with this 
problem. The editors of our online publications covering post-
Soviet Central Asia, Afghanistan and the Balkans are all emigre 
journalists in London who develop their networks on the ground 
according to the possibilities in individual countries. In Uzbekistan, 
for example, the situation is relaxed enough for us to have a 
physical office in Tashkent and a rather normal network of 
correspondents radiating out from it. 

In Turkmenistan, however, the situation is significantly more 
complicated for us. Forget a physical office: all our reporters on the 
ground communicate directly via e-mail with our central office in 
London. Trying to build a normal network there would only attract 
informants who would turn in all our associates, so we keep our 
correspondents on the ground isolated from one another. They 
wouldn't recognize each other if they sat next to one another on a 
bus in downtown Ashghabat.  

But even if you have a developed network of correspondents on 
the ground, that doesn't mean that people will feel comfortable 
talking to them. When fear so thoroughly permeates society, 
mouths stay closed.  

In some cases, however, the subject matter is so potentially 
damaging to people's lives that they are able to overcome their 
fear of the authorities. The work of the Three Gorges Probe, a 
Web-site in Canada dedicated to discussing the controversial 
Three Gorges dam project in China, provides an interesting 
example of this. Publisher Patricia Adams was reluctant to discuss 
the details of her network on the ground, but she told me that 
ordinary people in the region are very eager to talk to TGP 
correspondents about the dam, as they genuinely hope their 
concerns will be addressed. Their willingness to talk is 
understandable; after all, many of them are the ones being 
resettled by the dam project.  

The Three Gorges Probe Web site highlights another particular 
problem of this genre: oftentimes, the line between journalism and 
activism becomes fuzzy -- to the detriment of the reader seeking 
objective information. Adams insists Three Gorges Probe is pure 
journalism, but it is pretty clear that the site offers a mostly critical 
view of the project. While that may be a justifiable editorial policy 
intended to counter all the official information on the dam project, 
many émigré sites have very serious problems with balance.  

Amnesty International's Umit Ozturk sees this as unfortunate in the 
Turkish case but admits, "It couldn't be any other way." Most 
Turkish and Kurdish émigré sites are run by "activist reporters," 
people who care so passionately about their cause that objectivity 
takes a back seat in their online efforts.  

Veronica Forwood of Reporters without Borders, however, says it 
depends on the background of the editors. Those who come from 
a strong journalism background usually try to maintain a sense of 
balance and concentrate on on-the-ground reporting rather than 
commentary.  

Interestingly, there is now serious talk in U.K. NGO circles of 
creating a non-profit project specifically designed to help émigré 
journalists establish Web sites with local correspondent networks 
for the people in their repressive regimes back home. The idea is 
to provide start-up funds as well as the technical expertise and 
journalism training needed to run an émigré Web site with real 
impact on the ground.  

That impact is the heart of the problem for all Web sites working 
within and around repressive regimes. For all the excited talk about 
the Internet bringing freedom, actual examples of online publishing 
bringing about change in these countries are few.  

In many ways, the Internet seems to fulfill the same role as 
samizdat did in Communist Czechoslovakia. Like that old dissident 
literature, the Internet in authoritarian regimes offers the only place 
for critical voices, but, sadly, it has little effect on the ground. 
Remember, despite the international fame of writers like Vaclav 
Havel, outside of a small circle of intellectuals in Prague, hardly 
anyone ever read samizdat within Communist Czechoslovakia. The 
Velvet Revolution emerged from direct action within a changed geo-
political atmosphere; decades of dissident carping had nothing to 
do with real change when the regime finally fell.  

As it was with samizdat, most people in authoritarian regimes never 
get a chance to see Internet publications, and the whole 
enterprise, both the publishing of banned information and official 
attempts to stop it, is more a game for elites: elite dissident 
intellectuals criticize elite rulers, and they argue back and forth in a 
virtual space. The opponents can score a few victories in that 
virtual space, but meanwhile, back in reality, little changes for the 
people on the ground.  

Some may find such a conclusion a bit pessimistic, especially 
coming from someone who works in the field of online journalism in 
these countries. But it is important to keep one's feet on the ground 
and neither underestimate the scope of the problem nor 
overestimate the ability of the medium.  

And there is some reason for cautious optimism. CPJ's A. Lin 
Neumann, for example, reminded me that, "elites, generally, tend 
to lead the movement toward change so the fact that the Internet is 
somewhat confined to elite communication in some places does 
not disqualify it as a change agent." Neumann points to China, 
saying that the Internet has had an effect on the ground there, 
leading, for instance, to greater impact of stories on corruption.  

Neumann also told me that the nature of the Internet means, "It is 
simply harder, even for the Burmese bad guys, to keep secrets 
from the world, because once information gets out it circulates 
widely."  

"Twenty years ago," he noted, "that information -- such as a secret 
arrest that is revealed through an underground contact -- would 
have to circulate by newsletters sent in the post; now it is on the 
desks of journalists and others within minutes."  


Copyright 1999-2002 Online Journalism Review





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