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“The 12 ‘Enemies of the Internet’ - Burma, China, Cuba, Egypt, Iran, North Korea, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Tunisia, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan and Vietnam - have all transformed their Internet into an Intranet in order to prevent their population from accessing ‘undesirable’ online information,” Reporters Without Borders said.
“All these countries distinguish themselves not only by their ability to censor online news and information but also by their virtually systematic persecution of troublesome Internet users,” the press freedom organisation said. Reporters Without Borders has placed 10 other governments “under surveillance” for adopting worrying measures that could open the way to abuses. The organisation draws particular attention to Australia and South Korea, where recent measures may endanger online free expression.
“Not only is the Internet more and more controlled, but new forms of censorship are emerging based on the manipulation of information,” Reporters Without Borders said. “Orchestrating the posting of comments on popular websites or organising hacker attacks is also used by repressive regimes to scramble or jam online content.”
A total of 70 cyber-dissidents are currently detained because of what they posted online. China is the world’s biggest prison for cyber-dissidents, followed by Vietnam and Iran.
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Eritrea is one of the most recent countries to have connected to the Internet, which it did in 2000. Since then, 42 cybercafés have opened there, almost all in the capital Asmara and the port city of Massawa.
The company EriTel, which owns the network infrastructure in the country, works in direct co-operation with the ministries of information and national development. There are four access providers, licensed by the information ministry, who must all use EriTel, which rents them their band width. From then on, surveillance of the network becomes easy, all the more so since online services such as Skype are inaccessible in Eritrea. The two official sites, Shabait.com and Shaebia.com, belonging respectively to the information ministry and to the sole political party, The Popular Front for Democracy and Justice (PFDJ), put out the regime’s ultra-nationalist propaganda. The Eritrean government is known to block or to attempt to block numbers of foreign-hosted websites, which is an indication of the size of the expatriate community. Webmasters, who are the technical managers of the websites, are sometimes harassed by the authorities.
Eritrea is one of the most closed countries in terms of news. Independent media have been removed from the landscape. The Internet penetration rate is extremely low, with less than 2% of the population going online. However, despite the connection problems, Eritreans can receive news through the Internet. Security forces are however present around the cybercafés, as they are everywhere in the city, and have stepped up surveillance of the movements and activities of Internet users. Three of them were arrested in Asmara on 26 December 2008.
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