(WiPC/IFEX) – The following is a WiPC press statement: International PEN’s Writers in Prison Committee Protests Growing Attacks on “Cyber-Dissent” in Asia On 10 December 2004, the Writers in Prison Committee of the world association of writers, International PEN, will be marking International Human Rights Day with a global campaign to release “cyber-dissidents” held in […]
(WiPC/IFEX) – The following is a WiPC press statement:
International PEN’s Writers in Prison Committee Protests Growing Attacks on “Cyber-Dissent” in Asia
On 10 December 2004, the Writers in Prison Committee of the world association of writers, International PEN, will be marking International Human Rights Day with a global campaign to release “cyber-dissidents” held in three countries in Asia: China, the Maldives and Vietnam. This action marks the first of a series of PEN focuses planned through to 2005 on the growth of infringements of the right to free expression of those who use the Internet and e-mail.
The Internet has been a world phenomenon over the past decade with online information transforming societies and their economies. Business, government and organisations of every kind, as well as individuals in their home and workplace, traffic the world-wide web and use electronic mail daily.
World dissident communities have seized on the Internet as a method of expressing views about governments. This form has particular importance in countries where the traditional print-forms of communication, such as journals, have been banned. The Internet promises unfettered exchange of opinions. “Cyber-dissent” has become the samizdat of the 21st Century.
Yet at the same time governments in the West and elsewhere are acting to control the Internet. Moves to remove “harmful” contents from web-sites by systems that block access, and by governmental demands on Internet Service Providers (ISPs) to conform else face closure, have been condemned by human rights watchdogs as being means through which governments can stifle free expression. Similarly, state-controlled or state-influenced ISPs block off (“firewall”) unwanted sites from their users, thus denying their users the right to freedom of information.
This has led to many individuals expressing dissident views, or attempting to access a firewalled site, to find themselves brought before the courts or even imprisoned. In the past five years, PEN and other human rights groups have monitored infringements of free expression of on-line users in countries as diverse as Bahrain, Belarus, China, Iran, the Maldives, Saudi Arabia, Tunisia, Ukraine, the United Arab Emirates and Vietnam. Reporters sans frontières, in its 2004 report, Internet Under Surveillance (http://www. rsf.org), estimates that around 70 cyber-dissidents are detained around the world, a number that is rising.
The majority of long term detentions of cyber-dissidents are in Asia, and PEN is focussing on the plight of six on-line dissidents held in three Asian states: China, the Maldives and Vietnam. Huang Jinqiu’s detention is part of an epidemic of arrests of cyber-dissidents in China. He is serving a 12-year prison term. The Saandhaanu Four, given long prison sentences in the Maldives for an on-line magazine, are suffering ill health and reported maltreatment. Also in poor health is Pham Hong Son, serving a five-year prison term in Vietnam for publishing on-line.
PEN members world wide will be writing to governments to call for the release of imprisoned on-line writers. Heads of international and national ISPs will also be called on not to give into governments’ demands to limit and curtail the use of and access of their services, and to do all that they can to ensure that the Internet remains a space for freedom of expression and information.
