freedom of internet news at stake

The World Press Freedom Committee (WPFC) alert on world wide web 
press freedom discussions to be held in Geneva, Switzerland Dec. 
10-12.
-T

Freedom of Internet News at Stake, Group Warns
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=655&ncid=655&e=3&u=/oneworld/20030730/wl_oneworld/4536646291059564881

Stephen Leahy, Inter Press Service (IPS)

BROOKLIN, Canada, Jul 29 (IPS) - The free flow of news on the 
Internet is at risk unless governments that attend December's global 
information summit commit to supporting free expression and not 
restricting information online, warns an umbrella group of 
journalists' organisations.
"News on the Internet is easily blocked and it's often done by 
countries," says Marilyn Greene of the World Press Freedom Committee 
(WPFC). China, Pakistan, Malaysia and Vietnam are just a few of the 
many nations that block news sites, shut down Internet cafes, and 
arrest citizens for disseminating legitimate news, she told IPS.

WSIS evolved from a planned technical gathering of the International 
Telecommunications Union to a full-blown United Nations (news - web 
sites) summit because of the shift from an industrial world to an 
information-based global society.

According to the WSIS website, its overall goal is to assist 
"governments, institutions and all sectors of civil society deal with 
the new challenges of the ever-evolving information society, 
specifically identifying ways to help close the gap between the 
'haves' and 'have nots' of access to the global information and 
communication network."

Improving access is not the only significant and long-lasting impact 
the Summit is expected to have.

"WSIS will set the guiding principles for the Internet for the next 
few decades," says Spencer Moore, chair of the press freedom 
committee of the National Press Club of Canada.

Those principles will be agreed upon at the first phase of WSIS--to 
be held in Geneva, Switzerland Dec. 10-12--and written into an 
official WSIS declaration.

Press Freedom is not mentioned in the current draft version of the 
declaration. ”We don't know if that's an oversight or was done on 
purpose,” says Greene.

But without an explicit statement confirming the principle of press 
freedom, dictatorships can censor online news claiming that the 
United Nations says it's OK, she adds.

"Democracies are not in a majority among the UN's 185 member countries."

Reflecting the Summit's origins, and in spite of the liberal use of 
catch phases like 'information society' and 'digital divide', WSIS 
preparatory meetings have focused on technology and commercial 
aspects of the Internet, not on its content or impact on human 
rights, says Pauline Dugr of the Canadian Commission to UNESCO (news 
- web sites) (the U.N. Educational, Scientific and Cultural 
Organization).

”Journalists or other content creators have not been involved in the 
process. Hopefully they will be at the final preparatory meeting in 
Geneva this September,” Dugr says. Freedom of expression ought to be 
included as basic principle, she adds.

At least 10 regional and other preparatory meetings have been held to 
date in countries around the world.

WPFC, which represents 44 affiliated journalists' groups on six 
continents, would prefer to have the entire freedom of expression 
paragraph (Article 19) from the Universal Declaration of Human Rights 
in the WSIS statement.

”As the WSIS declaration stands, there are lots of opportunities to 
use it to justify censorship,” says Moore. Currently, the document 
says everyone has a ”right to communicate”, which could be 
interpreted by governments as a way to force the online press to 
print their views, he says.

Quoting Article 19 in the declaration would solve those kinds of 
problems--and endless debates on the meaning of various terms--says 
Moore.

But there would be considerable opposition to that move, many 
observers believe.
A June 2003 report by France-based Reporters Without Borders 
documents government control of Internet news by 60 countries from 
2001 to 2003. Aside from totalitarian regimes they included a number 
of democracies, such as India and the United States, which have 
adopted anti-terrorist laws that threaten freedom of expression on 
the Internet.
Tunisia is among the more egregious offenders of online press 
freedom, according to Reporters Without Borders (RWB). Zouhair 
Yahyaoui, creator of the web news site TUNeZINE, which reflected 
human rights and justice concerns, was jailed for two years for 
”spreading false news” in July 2002, says the RWB website.
Despite three hunger strikes, Yahyaoui remains in prison with his 
only hope an unlikely pardon from Tunisian President Ben Ali.
Interestingly, in November 2005 Tunisia will host the second and 
final WSIS phase. That meeting will evaluate how the Geneva 
Declaration and Action Plan have been implemented.

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