(RSF/IFEX) – The following is an RSF press release: On 17 February 2003, a preparatory conference will open in Geneva, under the auspices of the United Nations, concerning the World Summit on the Information Society, to be held in the city in December. RSF would like to take this occasion to forewarn the United Nations, […]
(RSF/IFEX) – The following is an RSF press release:
On 17 February 2003, a preparatory conference will open in Geneva, under the auspices of the United Nations, concerning the World Summit on the Information Society, to be held in the city in December.
RSF would like to take this occasion to forewarn the United Nations, as well as all member-state governments, not to make any attempt to use this summit – whose aim is to narrow the technological gap between rich and poor countries – as a means to further impede press freedom on the Internet.
It became evident, during the various regional preparatory meetings that have already taken place around the world, that many governments were planning to use the fight against criminal activities on the Internet as justification to impose censorship and other coercive measures that may also curtail the media’s new technological activities. RSF has found, in these states’ contributions, the same interventionist and restrictive ideas that inspired the “New World Order of Information” project in the 1970s and 1980s.
RSF’s mistrust was heightened, at these regional meetings, by the manifest desire of several states to prevent civil society and non-governmental organisation representatives from participating in the preliminary proceedings of the World Summit on the Information Society. Neither is it reassuring that the second phase of the Summit is scheduled to be held in 2005 in Tunisia, a country whose deplorable situation, in terms of freedom of expression and freedom of information, is common knowledge.
