[WSIS CS-Plenary] Fw: Govts Must Commit to Freedom of Internet News, says Group

[Alan G. Alegre]

picked up from one of the mailing lists...

> MEDIA:
> Govts Must Commit to Freedom of Internet News, says Group
>
> Stephen Leahy
>
>
> BROOKLIN, Canada, Jul 29 (IPS) - The free flow of news
> on the Internet is at risk unless governments that
> attend December's global information summit commit to
> supporting free expression, and to not restricting
> information online, warns an umbrella group of
> journalists' organisations.
>
> "News on the Internet is easily blocked and it's often
> done by countries," says Marilyn Greene of the World
> Press Freedom Committee (WPFC). China, Pakistan,
> Malaysia and Vietnam are just a few of the many
> nations that block news sites, shut down Internet
> cafes and arrest citizens for disseminating legitimate
> news, she told IPS.
>
> WSIS evolved from a planned technical gathering of the
> International Telecommunications Union to a full-blown
> United Nations summit because of the shift from an
> industrial world to an information-based global
> society.
>
> According to the WSIS website, its overall goal is to
> assist "governments, institutions and all sectors of
> civil society deal with the new challenges of the
> ever-evolving information society, specifically
> identifying ways to help close the gap between the
> 'haves' and 'have nots' of access to the global
> information and communication network".
>
> Improving access is not the only significant and
> long-lasting impact the Summit is expected to have.
>
> "WSIS will set the guiding principles for the Internet
> for the next few decades," says Spencer Moore, chair
> of the press freedom committee of the National Press
> Club of Canada.
>
> Those principles will be agreed upon at the first
> phase of WSIS -- to be held in Geneva, Switzerland
> Dec. 10-12 -- and written into an official WSIS
> declaration.
>
> Press Freedom is not mentioned in the current draft
> version of the declaration. "We don't know if that's
> an oversight or was done on purpose," says Greene.
>
> But without an explicit statement confirming the
> principle of press freedom, dictatorships can censor
> online news claiming that the United Nations says it's
> OK, she adds.
>
> "Democracies are not in a majority among the UN's 185
> member countries."
>
> Reflecting the Summit's origins, and in spite of the
> liberal use of catch phases like 'information society'
> and 'digital divide', WSIS preparatory meetings have
> focussed on technology and commercial aspects of the
> Internet, not on its content or impact on human
> rights, says Pauline Dugré of the Canadian Commission
> to UNESCO (the U.N. Educational, Scientific and
> Cultural Organization).
>
> "Journalists or other content creators have not been
> involved in the process. Hopefully they will be at the
> final preparatory meeting in Geneva this September,"
> Dugré says. Freedom of expression ought to be included
> as basic principle, she adds.
>
> At least 10 regional and other preparatory meetings
> have been held to date in countries around the world.
>
> WPFC, which represents 44 affiliated journalists'
> groups on six continents, would prefer to have the
> entire freedom of expression paragraph (Article 19)
> from the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in the
> WSIS statement.
>
> "As the WSIS declaration stands, there are lots of
> opportunities to use it to justify censorship," says
> Moore. Currently, the document says everyone has a
> "right to communicate", which could be interpreted by
> governments as a way to force the online press to
> print their views, he says.
>
> Quoting Article 19 in the declaration would solve
> those kinds of problems -- and endless debates on the
> meaning of various terms ¡- Moore believes..
>
> But there would be considerable opposition to that
> move, many observers believe.
>
> A June 2003 report by France-based Reporters Without
> Borders documents government control of Internet news
> by 60 countries from 2001 to 2003. Aside from
> totalitarian regimes they included a number of
> democracies, such as India and the United States,
> which, have adopted anti-terrorist laws that threaten
> freedom of expression on the Internet.
>
> Tunisia is among the more egregious offenders of
> online press freedom, according to Reporters Without
> Borders (RWB). Zouhair Yahyaoui, creator of the web
> news site TUNeZINE, which reflected human rights and
> justice concerns, was jailed for two years for
> "spreading false news" in July 2002, says the RWB
> website.
>
> Despite three hunger strikes, Yahyaoui remains in
> prison with his only hope an unlikely pardon from
> Tunisian President Ben Ali.
>
> Interestingly, in November 2005 Tunisia will host the
> second and final WSIS phase. That meeting will
> evaluate how the Geneva Declaration and Action Plan
> have been implemented. (END/2003)
>