FREE SPEECH: Freedom Of Expression On The Internet Is Vanishing In Asia

A 2008 calendar photograph by John Brown depicts a young toddler drinking a milk product in Phnom Penh, Cambodia. Follow Me On Twitter.

CHINA AND MILK POISONING

As you may recall, a little more than 1 year ago thousands of youngsters living in China became ill after drinking tainted Chinese milk products. Melamine contamination of milk was traced to, among others, the Sanlu company of China. Six infants died when melamine, an industrial plastic, was added to powders after production and 54,000 people were hospitalized.

New Zealand’s leading dairy product exporter, the Fonterra company, distributed their products in China and was a large shareholder in Sanlu. As Fonterra CEO Andrew Ferrier stated, “We learned a painful lesson from what happened in China,” “We weren’t prepared for somebody introducing a poison from outside the supply chain…"

The news of this state of affairs in China was slow in reaching the international media due to China's less than free press.

CHINA AND INTERNET POISONING

At about the same time, according to a report that appeared in Uncensor China, media freedom organization Reporters Without Borders (RSF) said it had obtained a copy of a classified memo detailing how Chinese Government officials should behave around foreign journalists before and during the 2008 Olympics. Officials were told to show openness, but also to try to control and influence the international media’s coverage.

Attempting to "control and influence" foreigners with press passes, journalist visas, and photography equipment might be one thing, but what about local journalists in China using emerging platforms of communication and reportage such as the Internet? At last count there were 28 journalists imprisoned in China as tallied by the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), but 24 of them were charged and sentenced for articles and commentaries they posted online.

FREE SPEECH ON THE INTERNET IS VANISHING IN ASIA

According to an article written by Shawn W Crispin, Asia Times Online’s Southeast Asia Editor and Asia Program Consultant to the Committee to Protect Journalists that appeared in the February 27, 2009 edition of Asia Times (Hong Kong), free speech on the internet is vanishing throughout Asia.

Crispin says, "The battle for Internet freedom is particularly pitched in Southeast Asia, where even nominally democratic governments are now cracking down on journalists, bloggers and ordinary Internet users. China has emerged as the region’s Internet censorship role model, with its successful use of sophisticated filtering and surveillance technologies, widely known as Beijing’s “Great Firewall”.

Shawn Crispin tells us that Southeast Asian governments are beginning to poison the "supply chain" of information found on the Internet, thereby stifling freedom of expression.

HERE ARE A FEW EXCERPTS:

Cambodia

For example, he states that "When a state-linked Cambodian Internet service provider (ISP) blocked access this month to a critical non-governmental organization report detailing the government’s alleged mismanagement of natural and energy resources (PDF 4.6 MB), the censorship closed the loop on the region’s fast-closing cyberspace." All this despite the fact that less than 0.3% of the population is online, one of the lowest Internet penetration rates in the world.

Nevertheless, Cambodia's Prime Minister Hun Sen recently warned in a graduation ceremony speech in Phnom Penh that government critics should "Be careful with the language of "dictatorial regime." He continued,

"Be careful, one day legal action will be used ... and "when legal action is used, you guys would say freedom of expression is prohibited, but your expression is wrong." Cambodia signed the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and incorporated it into Cambodian law.

Thailand

In Thailand, "The government has launched one of the most aggressive crackdowns on Internet freedom seen anywhere in the world - so far without a peep of dissent from Bangkok’s US embassy. The crackdown was presaged by the passage of the 2007 Computer Crime Act, which among other measures made the use of proxy servers to circumvent government blocks on websites an offense punishable by imprisonment."

Malaysia

"In 1996 the Malaysian government pledged not to censor the Internet to lure foreign funds to the Multimedia Super Corridor project, an ambitious state gambit that aimed to incubate Malaysia’s own version of the US’s Silicon Valley. The no-censorship policy allowed online news providers and bloggers to report and comment on news that the state-controlled mainstream media either neglected or was instructed from above to ignore.

That commitment was symbolically dropped last year when the government ordered local ISPs to block access to prominent blogger Raja Petra Kamarudin’s Malaysia Today news site, which has a larger readership than several established state-influenced newspapers. He was charged and detained under both the Sedition and Internal Security Acts for online writings which were critical of the government."

Vietnam

"Vietnam is known to maintain some of Asia’s most extensive Internet controls outside of China, and in recent months moved to introduce more stringent regulations governing bloggers and their postings."

Singapore

"Singapore authorities harassed an Asia Times Online contributor for a November 2008 story that detailed the island state’s mounting financial troubles. Police claimed that the article had been sent with added malicious comments to the head of state, opposition politicians and newspapers from the reporter’s e-mail account. The reporter denied the charge and police officials later indicated that an unidentified hacker had sent the message from her account. Either way, the reporter has been put on official notice that her online writings and e-mail activities are under surveillance."

Burma (Myanmar)

The military junta has "Dedicated significant resources to Internet censorship since the country failed to technologically control the Internet in 2007 when undercover journalists sent footage and reports of the "Saffron Revolution" street protests to outside news organizations.

The regime unplugged the Internet altogether before its fatal, final crackdown. There are indications that Myanmar authorities have since received censorship training from Russian and Chinese officials. Some contend that this explains the mysterious distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks on a number of exile media groups’ websites that began in 2008."

A DANGEROUS SPACE

You can read the entire article here or take note that:

Mr. Crispin concludes his article by stating, "Asia’s Internet is a substantially more dangerous space than it was previously. Southeast Asian governments are now responding with bigger budgets and heavier hands to the technological and political challenge presented by online expression."

"Under that mounting assault, previous high hopes for the medium’s democracy-promoting potential have in large measure faded."

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If you disagree with Shawn W Crispin, he can be contacted at swcrispin@atimes.com

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Cambodian Bloggers Opening Up Conservative Society

Cambodia's patchy access to the Internet is on display above a street in a residential area of Phnom Penh, Cambodia.

Photo © John Brown All Rights Reserved

The following article appeared online on June 17th, 2008 at:

http://afp.google.com/copyright?hl=en

Unfortunately the author is unknown, but (AFP) owns the copyright to this story between the words "START" and "END". Although the story first appeared nearly a year ago, it offers a look into the atmosphere in which blogs from Cambodia are written, what subjects are discussed or avoided, and why.

START

Jun 17, 2008

PHNOM PENH (AFP) — When Hor Virak started blogging three years ago, he was one of only a handful of bloggers in Cambodia and quickly gained a following for his frequent postings on technology.

At first, he said, "I just rode my motorbike around and took interesting pictures to post on my blog". But by the beginning of last year, he was attracting several hundred readers a day and now says he is thrilled with his new-found celebrity.

"When I started it, I had no idea it would take me to this level of fame," he said, sitting at his laptop in a Phnom Penh cafe. If Hor Virak's idea of fame seems modest, it's because government data show only about ten percent of Cambodia's 14.4 million people have Internet access.

He is among a lively group of Cambodian bloggers -- or "cloggers" as they call themselves -- who are opening up this tiny, conservative country to the wider world and potentially bringing in unprecedented social change. Cambodian bloggers are keeping online diaries which they use to reflect on personal relationships, school and social issues, expressing opinions that are traditionally kept private.

"This kind of public expression is a new thing that never happened in our society," said Be Chantra, who trains bloggers through a non profit organization called the Open Institute.

Blogging in Cambodia did not have an auspicious start. In 2003, Be Chantra and two other colleagues traveled the country training 2,000 students to blog in an initiative funded by Microsoft and United States aid agencies. "It was not successful," Be Chantra said, shaking his head.

Fewer than five percent of his students were able to keep a blog afterwards as they could not access the Internet, he said. Since then, however, more than 1,000 Cambodians have turned to blogging and most of them are students who began by their own initiative, said Be Chantra.

Cambodian bloggers now meet regularly and hold workshops to teach each other about new software applications. Most see this as great progress as the Internet only arrived here a little more than a decade ago. "If the Internet was cheaper, faster and easier to access there would be even more bloggers," said Be Chantra.

Despite patchy access to the Internet, 20-year-old university student Keo Kalyan has begun earning an income from her blog musings, written under her online identity as "DeeDee, School Girl Genius". More than 200 visitors per day check out her postings, which are usually written in pink, and the Indian cosmetics company Shaadi has begun buying advertising space on her site.

"The money isn't much, but I'm happy my voice is being heard," Keo Kalyan said.

The majority of Cambodian bloggers write in English so they can reach a global audience, but very few touch on one of blogging's most popular topics: politics.

Be Chantra's Khmer-language comedy blog is read by the Cambodian diaspora in the US and Japan but those hoping for something beyond humor are confronted with a banner on his site that reads: "No Politics Here". "Politics could easily hurt you and it is nonsense," he said.

Last year Radio Free Asia reporter Lem Pichpisey fled to Thailand after receiving anonymous death threats for his reports alleging Cambodia's political elite were involved in illegal logging.

Attacks against journalists in Cambodia have fallen in recent years as the government has turned to the courts to punish reporters or publications it feels have violated the press law, critics say.

Although defamation, the charge most frequently leveled against journalists, was decriminalized in 2006, stiff fines now discourage aggressive reporting.

"The good thing about a blog is that it can be anonymous and you still can be contacted," said Gary Kawaguchi, a digital media trainer at the Department of Media and Communications of Cambodia. "But the press here is very controlled and people still find out who you are so bloggers still have to be careful," he added.

Chak Sopheap, a university student who started a blog in her own name last year to draw attention to Cambodia's impoverished rural communities, said she was threatened criticizing the ruling Cambodian People's Party (CPP). "The message said, "If I were you, I would run. Otherwise you will be killed," Chak Sopheap said.

While her fellow bloggers have vowed to keep their political criticism anonymous, Chak Sopheap said she will continue to post her views, claiming her blog affords more freedom of expression than Cambodia's mainstream media.

"Through blogs people change their attitudes and open their closed-lip habits. They can talk about how society can be developed," she said.

END

According to an article written by Philippines Chief Justice Reynato S. Puno entitled, "Freedom of Press: A Touchstone of Democracy", "Legal historians trace the roots of freedom of expression to Athens, Greece as far back as 800-600 B.C. Even then, expressive freedom was given only to select "citizens" which did not include women, resident aliens and juveniles. The Athenian majority was not accorded the expressive freedom by their aristocratic rulers. The Roman empire's ruling class also sternly controlled freedom of expression and the distribution of news to the citizenry."

The same was true in England. Please read my previous post entitled, Could Southeast Asia Learn About Press Freedom From John Peter Zenger?

Under early English common law, the truthfulness of a statement was not a defense, therefore a criticism of the Crown, even though truthful, could result in a severe penalty. This is similar to the model adopted by Cambodia's current government.

Please read my previous post entitled, Cambodian Opposition Leader Mu Sochua Will Not Withdraw Her Defamation Suit Against Cambodia's Prime Minister Hun Sen

English common law recognized four types of libel: (1) blasphemous libel, which is any speech that denied the existence of God or ridiculed any Christian doctrine; (2) seditious libel or criticism of the government, its leaders or policies; (3) obscene libel, which is the forerunner of obscenity laws, and (4) private libel, which is speech that injured the reputation of another person.

So that's it folks. You have clicked on the links and realize that a statement beginning with the phrase, "according to so and so" can land a journalist, lawyer or anyone else in big a heap of trouble in the Kingdom of Cambodia no matter if what THE OTHER PERSON SAID was truthful or not.

I admire 20-year-old university student Keo Kalyan because she blogs in pink.
John Brown Photojournalist On LIGHTSTALKERS
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