A 2008 calendar photograph by
John Brown depicts a young toddler drinking a milk product in Phnom Penh, Cambodia.
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CHINA AND MILK POISONINGAs 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 POISONINGAt 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 ASIAAccording 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:CambodiaFor 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.
ThailandIn 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 SPACEYou 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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Shawn W Crispin, he can be contacted at
swcrispin@atimes.comJohn Brown Photojournalist On LIGHTSTALKERSMy Mondo Library PhotographyMy Photoshelter Photography Archive HomepageFollow Me On Twitter
