The Internet Makes the World Smaller and Threatens Repression

Building Communities: ABCNEWS.com. In 1997 the Internet was a promising new phenomenon that human rights activists seized upon to publicize repression. Totalitarian regimes were feeling the threat and closing down access. How quickly things change and the world gets smaller (1997).

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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