WEB IS BATTLEGROUND BETWEEN CENSORS, JOURNALISTS

By: Karim Mostafa WEB IS BATTLEGROUND BETWEEN CENSORS, JOURNALISTS

A World Press Freedom Day Special Report



E-mail users in Malaysia got a reprieve Tuesday as a judge ruled in
favor of a bank employee who had been charged with spreading e-mail
rumors about an alleged 1998 riot of disgruntled Indonesian migrant
workers in Chow Kit.



The news was reported by Malaysiakini.com, an alternative news Web site
that has evaded government censorship, according to press freedom
advocates. While Malaysia has a history of closing opposition
newspapers, it has pledged not to censor the Internet.


Harakah, a Malay-language biweekly newspaper, has been censored
in print, but continues to publish
online, says Vincent Brossel, researcher on Internet censorship at
Reporters sans Frontieres in Paris.



Using the Internet for distributing information that's forbidden to be
printed has proven to be a godsend for many news organizations around
the globe.


Rafy Kourouian has been publishing censored stories
online for almost three years. And he's noticed that the Egyptian
government has been censoring his print product much less. 'Over the
past six months, we haven't been getting censored much at all,' says
Kourouian, business and managing editor of the English-language weekly
The Middle East Times in
Cairo, Egypt.


'We have been contacted by the Egyptian government authorities about
the censorship site,' Kourouian says. 'Obviously, they're not happy
about it.'



But the site remains out of the jurisdiction of Egyptian authorities.
The site is registered in the United States and uses an Internet
Service Provider (ISP) based in Germany. However, Cairo Times, a
rival of the Middle East Times, also posts censored stories, The
Forbidden File, online using a Cairo-based ISP, Geganet.



Kourouian guesses that censorship has eased up since 'Egypt wants to
market itself as a media 'free zone' in order to establish itself as
the media capital in the Middle East.' And so far Egypt has not
resorted to filtering or blocking access to Web sites like its neighbor
Saudi Arabia.


New medium, new controls



Besides Saudi Arabia, many governments have sought to control Internet
access and distribution of online news, just as they have restricted
the print press for years by revoking publishing permits, controlling
newsprint, and imprisoning journalists.



'What's different about the Internet is that it's a new media crossing
all the frontiers,' says Brossel of Reporters sans Frontieres.


'The Internet, at the moment, proposes a new opportunity for censors,'
says Leonard Sussman, a senior scholar in international communications
at Freedom House in New York and author of the recently released
essay'Censor Dot Gov:
The Internet and Press Freedom 2000'. 'The jury is still out on
whether governments will be able to effectively censor Web sites.'


Governments are quickly coming up with new ways to control access to
information. The most prevalent method is government control of
individual access to the Internet. State-run ISPs in some countries are
often subject to monitoring. In Volgograd, Russia, Bayard-Slavia
Communications, an ISP, took a risk by not turning over its users' e-

mail addresses to the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB), heir to
the Soviet-era KGB. The FSB was trying to implement its SORM-2 policy
that requires all Russian ISPs to reroute all electronic transmissions
to FSB headquarters. Bayard Slavia Communications filed a lawsuit
against the agency and SORM-2 only to have its satellite channel
disconnected two weeks later.


Nailj Murzahanov, general director of Bayard-Slavia Communications,
told
Prism, a monthly magazine published by the Jamestown
Foundation, 'All my clients have left and everyone [in Volgograd] is
afraid to help me.'


Another method for censoring governments is filtering or blocking sites
that might be deemed unsuitable to users. Saudi Arabia and others have
resorted to this tactic, citing sites that are pornographic or
political as contradictory to their Muslim faith and Arab traditions.


According to Joel Campagna, program coordinator of the Middle East and
North Africa at the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists
(CPJ), his organization's Web site has
been blocked in Tunisia.


Other countries involved in Internet censorship have been highlighted
in a report published by Reporters sans Frontieres. In the course of
researching 'The
Twenty Enemies of the Internet,' Brossel found that countries such
as China often want to embrace the Internet to integrate themselves
into the world economy, but are concerned that the Web will be used to
send information regarding politics and democracy.


'China has developed the newer method of getting staff inside the ISPs
to control and monitor chat rooms and e-mail,' Brossel says. 'If
anything about democracy appears, they directly intervene by shutting
the chat room. It's a new style of censorship.'



'The most repressive censorship online is in Cuba and China,' says Ann
Cooper, executive director at CPJ, which publishes an annual report on
press freedom violations. In 'Attacks on the Press in 1999,' China is
cited for imprisoning 11 journalists, six of whom used the Internet to
get information out, Cooper says.



As for independent journalists in Cuba, Cooper says, 'They use the
phone to call out stories, often to colleagues in Miami, who later post
the stories on the Web.' Cooper says the Cuban government now
essentially puts these journalists under house arrest whenever an event
that they suspect the journalists might cover is about to take place.
Web sites that publish stories telephoned out of Cuba include cubafreepress.org,
cubanet.org, and the Inter America Press Association's newest addition,
cuba.sipiapa.org.



Web is friend of press freedom advocates



As these different press freedom organizations continue to report the
murder, jailing, harassment, and intimidation of journalists, they've
found the Internet has helped them get more information out there as
well.


'The Internet has made a tremendous difference in tracking press
freedom,' Sussman says. 'Twenty-three years ago, when Freedom House
started, we only got great aberrations such as murder and we found it
difficult to publish.'


'E-mail changed our jobs dramatically,' Cooper adds. It has made it
easier for journalists to contact the group and for violations of press
freedom to be reported from remote locales, she says.



These advocates respond to violations in various ways, including
issuing protest letters to heads of state, writing press releases about
violations, and posting daily reports online. Now these organizations
are all members of a central alert network called the International Freedom of
Expression Exchange (IFEX) Clearing House. 'IFEX is an international network to
provide solidarity in fighting enemies of the press,' says Rebeccah Nelems,
editor of the weekly IFEX Communique.


Based in Toronto, IFEX posts online member organizations' alerts on
press freedom violations. Since its founding in 1992, the site has
added 47 members and 3 affiliate members. The Internet also has made it
possible for regional press freedom groups to form and report their
findings. Nelems proudly reports that 27 members are from newly
emerging democracies.


Member organizations will often issue releases on the same press
freedom violations. Cooper believes the more, the better.


'The process of shame has always had some impact,' adds Sussman. 'It
makes the people think about what they're doing because they have to
respond.'



And in his 23 years on the job, Sussman has often asked victims of
censorship, 'Did we hinder or help you?' The response? 'Even in the
instances where a crackdown has increased, they have ultimately said
that it has helped,' Sussman reports.



World Press Freedom Day Links



World Association of Newspapers

http://www.fiej.org/wh

ats_news/index.html



International Center for Journalists' Advocacy List

http://www.icfj.org

/onelinere/resource1.html



Canadian Journalists for Free Expression

http://www.ccpj.ca/



Committee to Protect Journalists Press Freedom Online

http://www.cpj.org/



Electronic Privacy Information Center

http://www.epic.org/



Freedom Forum Online

http://www.freedomforum.org/



The Freedom of Expression Institute/South Africa

http://fxi.org.za/



International Federation of Journalists

http://www.ifj.org/



International Freedom of Expression eXchange

http://www.ifex.org/



International Press Institute

http://www.freemedia.at/inde

x1.html



Freedom House

http://www.freedomhouse.org/



The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press

http://www.rcfp.org/