Reporters Without Borders has released a list of 13 nations it says are most guilty of suppression speech and expression on the Internet. Guess who made the list?
As part of its 24-hour online demonstration against online censorship, international watchdog organization Reporters Without Borders has released a list of 13 nations it dubs “enemies of the Internet” for restricting speech and suppressing freedom of expression on the Internet. And the organization is also inviting visitors to sound off to Yahoo co-founder Jerry Yang regarding the company’s involvement in the Chinese Internet market.
Reporters Without Borders publishes its list of “Internet enemies” every year, but 2006 marks the first time the publication has been accompanied by an online protest. New to the list this year is Egypt, which has been added due to its arrest and detention of three bloggers in the last year; past “enemies” Libya, the Maldives, and Nepal have all been removed from the top 13, although Reporters Without Borders still considers Libyan strongman Maummar Gaddafi to be a “predator of press freedom.”
According to Reporters Without Borders, more than 60 cyber-dissidents are currently imprisoned around the world for expressing themselves online, and in manby countries citizens can be imprisoned for what they post to a Web site or send to a mailing list. The organization hopes to raise global awareness of the situation and pressure regimes to expand online freedoms.
The United States is currently tied for 53rd place (with Botswana, Croatia, and Tonga) on the Reporters Without Borders index of press freedom. Tied for first place? Finland, iceland, Ireland, and the Netherlands.
Here is this year’s list of 13 “enemies of the Internet;” details behind the listings are available from the RSF Web site.
Reporters Without Borders “Enemies of the Internet”
- Belarus
- Burma
- China
- Cuba
- Egypt
- Iran
- North Korea
- Saudi Arabia
- Syria
- Tunisia
- Turkmenistan
- Uzbekistan
- Vietnam
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RSSThank god for the internet! Thanks to the internet we can discover that the ‘freedom of the internet’ campaign, by Reporters Without Borders (RSF), relies on political advice on which ‘repressive countries’ to target from the US State Department (1). On the basis of this campaign, the US State Department then announced that RSF had ‘independently’ declared Cuba (and others) as an ‘enemy of the internet’ (2).
An article on the RSF website does admit that the US economic blockade against Cuba “may indeed explain the slowness of the Cuban Internet and the endless lines outside Internet cafes”(3). In 2005, 12 journalists were murdered in Mexico, Brazil and Peru. However the main ‘enemy’ of journalists in the region, according to RSF, is Cuba, where no journalist has been murdered since 1959 (4)
Fortunately, through the internet, we can discover that Reporters Without Borders is partly funded by the US State Department, and by various US backed private organisations, such as the Florida based ‘Center for a Free Cuba’ (5) and the President Reagan created and US Congress funded ‘National Endowment for Democracy’. RSF head Robert Ménard admits “We indeed receive money from the NED. And that hasn’t posed any problem.”(4) The NED recently funded journalists during elections in Haiti (6).
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1. Reporters Without Borders - Freedom of the Internet campaign
Petition 6 Jan 2006
“A list of countries that repress freedom of expression would be drawn up on the basis of documents provided by the US State Department and would be appended to the code of conduct or law that is adopted. This list would be regularly updated.”
http://www.rsf.org/article.php3?id_article=16110
2. Global Press Group Calls Cuban Government Enemy of the Internet
Reporters Without Borders listed Cuba among 15 nations as Internet enemies
By Eric Green - 03 February 2006
“Washington -- A global press advocacy group is continuing its criticism of Cuba's Communist regime with a statement rebuking the Cuban government for its ‘repressive policy toward the Internet.’”
http://usinfo.state.gov/xarchives/display.html?p=w...
3. Going online in Cuba - Internet under surveillance, RSF
http://www.rsf.org/article.php3?id_article=19335
4. The Reporters Without Borders Fraud by Salim Lamrani May 13 2005
Znet, http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?Sectio...
5. Reporters Without Borders Unmasked, By DIANA BARAHONA
Counter Punch, May 17, 2005, http://www.counterpunch.org/barahona05172005.html
Through the US Government backed and Florida based ‘Center for a Free Cuba’ - Otto Reich, Special Envoy to the Western Hemisphere for the Secretary of State, arranged payment to Reporters Without Borders of 24,970 euros in 2002, and 59,201 euros in 2003.
6. Denial in Haiti, Haiti Action, 30 Dec 2005
http://www.haitiaction.net/News/FP/12_29_5/12_29_5...