Repressive countries gaining foothold on "Information Society"

a press release from Reporters Without Borders....


ALERT UPDATE - INTERNATIONAL

30 November 2004

Repressive countries gaining foothold ahead of World Summit on the
Information Society, RSF warns

SOURCE: Reporters sans frontières (RSF), Paris

(RSF/IFEX) - RSF has expressed concern that several countries that
harshly crack down on use of the Internet are members of the Working Group on Internet Governance (WGIG), which met in Geneva from 23 to 25 November 2004, in the run-up to the 2005 World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) in Tunis.

The organisation also noted that from 22 to 23 November, another
repressive country, Syria, hosted a WSIS preparatory meeting organised to set up a "partnership to build an information society for the Arab world."

"Holding a summit in Tunisia about the free flow of online information is already absurd," RSF said, "but holding a preparatory meeting in a countrylike Syria, where an Internet user is in prison simply for having sent a newsletter via e-mail, is chilling. Does this mean the Internet policies of these regimes are acceptable choices for the rest of the world?"

WGIG membership was decided on during the first WSIS summit in Geneva in December 2003. The working group is tasked with drafting an Internet regulation proposal for the Tunis summit, defined as a shared notion of the roles and responsibilities of governments, intergovernmental and international organisations, the private sector and civil society. The group's work will affect the free flow of information on the Internet.

The WGIG's 40 members, half of which are civil society representatives,include Cuba, China, Iran, Singapore, Saudi Arabia and Tunisia, some of the world's most repressive countries as regards freedom of expression on the Internet. Pakistan, Russia and Egypt, which also crack down on Internetactivity, are also WGIG members.

For details of these countries' records concerning Internet press
freedom, see RSF's 2004 survey entitled, "The Internet under Surveillance", at http://www.rsf.org/rubrique.php3?id_rubrique=432

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