Thursday, May 04, 2006

Thailand put on watch list for efforts to control web

AFP
Beijing - Governments in Asia are considered among the world's worst ''enemies'' of internet freedom, as they increasingly censor websites and jail people who express views deemed dangerous online.
In comments marking World Press Freedom Day, today, experts said several countries including China, Vietnam and Nepal are feeling more threatened by cyberspace than ever as internet use booms among their populations.
Of 15 ''enemies of the internet'' named by Paris-based rights group Reporters Without Borders late last year, five were in East or South Asia - China, North Korea, Vietnam, Burma and Nepal. The 10 ''countries to watch'' included Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore and South Korea.
Experts warn that, with less freedom of information, Asian societies risk seeing more corruption and abuse of government power, while public discontent will grow, leading to more social instability.
''They fear the internet will spread Western ideas of freedom and democracy which will lead to an overthrow of their power,'' said formerly imprisoned Chinese journalist Gao Yu, who won Unesco's Guillermo Cano World Press Freedom award in 1997.
Employing sophisticated filtering technology, forcing internet cafes to register users and internet service providers to reveal user information, the governments were trying to rein in a medium they realise they must also embrace to spur modernisation and economic growth.
In China, the world's biggest jailer of journalists, the number of cyber dissidents imprisoned has exceeded the number of reporters locked up.
Vietnam, which lacks China's money and technology, has employed internet police to filter out ''subversive'' content and spy on cybercafes.
Burma blocks not only foreign news sites but also web-based email services and forces internet cafes to monitor their computer users.
North Korea only allows a few thousand privileged people to have access to a heavily-censored version of the internet.
Asian countries on the watch list, despite being perceived as more modern and open, also displayed worrying signs of trying to control the internet, the group said.
For example, in Thailand, the government extended its fight against internet pornography to censoring online news sites as part of Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra's effort to rein in the media. Defamation suits that once targeted newspapers now hit writers who publish online, the Southeast Asian Press Alliance said.

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