By
DAVID PHINNEY ABCNEWS.com
It might have happened in silence.
When the
Nigeria
imprisoned poet-playwright Ken Saro-Wiwa on trumped-up
murder charges in 1994, the government attempted to cover it
up with a news blackout. But then the reports rocketed
reports around the world of Saro-Wiwa’s arrest on the
Internet. Nearly
8,000 miles away in
San Francisco
, Michael Stein with the Institute for Global Communications
read about Saro-Wiwa’ s plight on his group’s Web site,
PeaceNet.
“Certainly, there was no word from
the military-controlled media in
Nigeria
,” Stein recalls. “We were flooded with late-breaking
news and letters of protest that
had been sent to the Nigerian ambassador at the
United Nations. There were probably 10 petitions to sign
sent by e-mail.”
A year later in 1995 the whole world
was watching when Nigerian officials walked Saro-Wiwa to the
gallows and executed him.
Nigeria
’s military dictators have been paying a heavy price ever
since. The deaths of the world-acclaimed civil-rights and
environmental leader and eight of his fellow tribe members
unleashed a lasting storm of international protest. Economic
sanctions and other international persist.
Stein credits the Internet, in part,
for helping to cast a light on what otherwise might have
occurred without notice.
Efforts
to Muzzle the Net
But repressive nations are catching on
and working to close a curtain around cyberspace. They
understand the power of the internet, an amorphous
electronic nervous system that expands its reach by leaps
and bounds with each passing year. E-mail, bulletin boards,
discussion groups and the World Wide Web all conspire
against centralized control of information, commerce and
cultural norms.
“The potential for truly exploring
democracy among people all over the world is enormous, but
there is so much fear of that potential,” says Jagdish
Parikh, an Internet specialist with Human Rights Watch,
which published Silencing the Net, a study of censorship
around the world.
That’s why many governments slap
heavy restrictions on their citizens’ exploring
cyberspace. Their objective? To protect their societies from
corrupting social and political influences.
Many
Paths to Censorship
Some Asian nations fashion their
policies after
Singapore
’s. Providers of political and religious content on this
small island must be registered with authorities. Banned
subject matter ranges from criticisms of government to
racial slurs and child pornography.
The more heavy-handed nations just
attempt to pull the plug entirely. In
Burma
, anyone owning a computer modem without governmental
approval faces punishment of 15 years. Other nations
exercise their control by making Internet access impractical
or prohibitively expensive.
Expanding
Usage Increases Threat
So far, these actions mean little in a
world just now waking up to the future of the Internet.
Presently, more than half of all users live in the
United States
.
But the rapidly expanding universe of
cyberspace will soon swallow
U.S.
dominance. In just two years, usage has tripled around the
globe, according to most industry indicators, a trend that
many predict to continue.
“In three years, less than 20 percent
of the users will be in the
U.S.
,” according to Wayne Sharpe, executive director of the
Toronto-based International Freedom of Expression Exchange.
“Once people around the world have access to the Net, then
governments will be putting more and more restrictions on
it.”
A
Valuable Tool for Human Rights
IFEX relies on the internet to
communicate with nearly 330 groups worldwide in a constant
effort to protect the freedom of working reporters,
journalists and writers.
Most recently, the group rallied
support that pressured
Peru
to release radio reporter Jesus Alfonso Castiglione Mendoza
after being sentenced to prison for 20 years. He had been
tried for alleged ties to the Shining Path guerrilla
movement before a “faceless” tribunal -- a panel of
judges who remain anonymous.
Only by marshalling a worldwide human
rights campaign largely on the Internet did IFEX succeed in
helping free
Mendoza
, says Sharpe. “The Internet is a fast, efficient and
private way to get these alerts out to communities,” he
says.
Such strategies may prove futile in the
future if nations impose greater and greater controls on
cyberspace, he adds.
“We have members in
Africa
,
South America
, and
Asia
who will be affected by restrictions,” he says. “There
is a lot of sensitive information that governments want to
keep tabs on -- especially information from those on the
front lines of human rights.”
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