[WSIS CS-Plenary] World Summit on the Information Society - bloggers and cyber-dissidents offer ad

[Hossein Amir]

International17 February 2005

World Summit on the Information Society - bloggers and cyber-dissidents 
offer advice

A preparatory meeting for the World Summit on the Information Society began 
on 17 February in Geneva. Reporters Without Borders is there with a 
delegation of cyber-dissidents and bloggers in order to put a face to the 
repression against Internet users in some of the countries that will be 
parading at this conference, and in order to present five recommendations 
for online free expression.

The Reporters Without Borders delegation attending the preparatory meeting :

Zouhair Yahyaoui (Tunisia, the country hosting the second stage of the WSIS) 
was imprisoned from 4 June 2002 to 18 November 2003 for making fun of 
President Ben Ali on his website, Tunezine.com. He received the Reporters 
Without Borders Cyber-Freedom Prize in June 2003.

Ibrahim Lutfy (Maldives) was arrested in January 2002 for helping to produce 
Sandhaanu, an electronic newsletter about President Gayoom's human rights 
violations. He escaped from prison in May 2003 and has since lived in 
Switzerland, where he has been granted political asylum.

Cai Chongguo (China), a philosophy professor and political dissident, had to 
flee his country after the Tiananmen Square massacres. He has been given 
asylum in France, where he is studying the system of online censorship that 
has been introduced in China.

Jay Bakht (Iran) is a founding member of Penlog, a group of Iranian 
bloggers. He lives in Britain, where he fights for the release of imprisoned 
bloggers and campaigns against the Iranian government's Internet filtering 
policies.


Zouhair Yahyaoui

Ibrahim Lutfy

Cai Chongguo

Jay Bakht



Read the four cyber-dissidents' accounts of their experiences on the site 
dedicated to this initiative : www.radionongrata.org

Reporters Without Borders' five recommendations for online free expression

1. Any law about the flow of information online must be anchored in freedom 
of expression as defined in Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human 
Rights

2. Internet users alone must decide what material they can and wish to 
access online. Automatic filtering of online content, by governments or 
private firms, is unacceptable. Filters must only be installed by Internet 
users themselves and only on their personal connection. Any policy of 
higher-level (national or even local) filtering conflicts with the principle 
of the free flow of information.

3. A decision to shut down a website, even an illegal one, must not in any 
circumstances be taken by the site's host or any other technical provider of 
Internet services. Only a judge can ban an online publication. A technical 
service provider cannot therefore be held criminally or civilly responsible 
for any illegal material posted on a hosted website unless the service 
provider refuses to obey a ruling by an impartial and independent court.

4. A government's civil or criminal powers are limited to content hosted on 
its territory or specifically aimed at the country's Internet users.

5. The editors of online publications, including bloggers and those running 
personal sites, must have the same protection and be shown the same 
consideration as professional journalists since, like them, they exercise a 
basic freedom, that of freedom of expression.

More details at : www.radionongrata.org

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