Regulations on Online Forums and Blogs in Southeast Asia
The Internet in Southeast Asia
The internet is one of the most outstanding features of globalization as it is known today, largely due to the fact that it has helped to connect the world, integrating political ideologies, economic pursuits and various cultural aspects. Hindley (2009) acknowledges that the internet is indeed a global market, especially when considering the various commercial activities that are carried out through the internet. The size of this market has expanded in recent times and this growth has brought with it various gains to the overall economy of nations. Subsequently, some countries, for example in Southeast Asia, have switched their attention to regulations aimed at restricting business transactions and curtailing the freedom of information based services that are found online. Such measures consist of mainly blocking the access to particular websites.
The connectivity of the internet in Asia is of both extremes the continent boast of places that are both densely connected and others that are sparsely connected. In 2008, both Thailand and Vietnam, countries found in the sub-continent of Southeast Asia, achieved a penetration that reached a quarter of their population. In the same year, 298 million of Chinas population was reported to have used the internet for communication, research or business making it the country with the greatest number of internet users in the world, yet its connectivity was still at 22.6 percent. Malaysia on the other hand, trailed behind Singapore, with a penetration of 61 percent ( HYPERLINK httpopennet.net httpopennet.net).
The internet has increased in its appeal to the populace in Southeast Asia particularly due to its interactive web-sites and social media forums, for instance, the web portals, blogs, discussion forums, and video sharing sites. These online social media have provided a crucial channel for the dissemination of news, information and divergent ideas, especially where the mainstream media outlets are controlled by the state, thereby pledging their allegiance to the ruling elite. In fact, bloggers have been referred to as members of the fifth estate in countries whose governments have a strong hold over media outlets, including China, Vietnam and Thailand ( HYPERLINK httpopennet.net httpopennet.net).
The Causes of Regulations of Online Forums in Southeast Asia
The countries in Southeast Asia have grown in leap and bound on the economic front, courtesy of the productive role they play in the global economy. Worth noting is the so called Asian Tigers found in Southeast Asia have heavily relied on the internet to market themselves to the world and conduct other crucial business transaction. The paradox is that these same countries have been at the forefront in restricting its citizens from freely using the internet. They have shown reservation in allowing their citizens to share ideas and information through the internet, a phenomenon they fear could upset their political and social ideologies.
Hindley (2009) notes that the problem stems from the fact that the internet does not respect national boundaries, with easy access to online services provided from any point of the globe. Therefore, governments who prefer that particular information should not be accessed by the public, find themselves helpless in trying to use traditional means.
As a result, Hindley (2009) points out, the political motivation to control critical ideas against regimes and opposing views is behind the regulation of the internet in Southeast Asia. Besides, in countries like China, North Korea and Vietnam, there are ethnic thematic concerns that also bring about internet censorship. In China, the information about Falung Gong, Tiananmen Square, the Tibetan Independence Movement and Taiwan are systematically blocked on the internet whereas inn South Korea, any information about North Korea is routinely censored.
This restriction on political ground has not been without cause In Malaysia, the independent news sites and blogs played a crucial role in providing the opposition parties with a platform to mobilize the populace during the general election of March 2008, in which Barasin Nasional (BN) coalition performed poorly and five bloggers were elected to seats for opposition parties. Even though the internet penetration had lagged behind in rural areas, alternative messages and information that were available only on the internet reached all the sectors of the society through Short Message Services, VCD made from online television programming and printed fliers (Hindley, 2009, p.4).
In Burma, the Military Junta considers the netizens in the country as the state of the enemy. Consequently, there is always a massive filtering of websites and extensive slowdowns, particularly at times when there are civil unrests in the country. Alternatively, the legislations governing internet use, otherwise referred to as the Electronic Act, is touted as one of the most liberticidal laws in the world (Reporters without Borders for Press Freedom, 2009).
Additionally, the internet is the only channel that the opposition in Singapore uses to air its campaign agenda to the public. As reported in Asia Times Online in April 2006, even by that time, the new media had helped to expand the political space for opposition parties in the country, with which they used to promote their alternative economic policies and demonstrate themselves as being the most transparent and accountable political option. Their main target in this case was the young voters who were considered as being techno-savvy voters.
In this way, the opposition employed the internet to hurdle over Singapores state-owned media, whose reportage was flagrantly leaning towards the ruling party. With the internet at their disposal, the opposition could now get a chance to present their case to the electorate. However, the vigilance by the Singaporean government saw to it that the availability of the internet did not translate into more political and social freedoms. In fact, the Singaporean government soon set out to force all bloggers to register their online identities, therefore stripping online writers their anonymous status. This was aimed at subjecting them to possible defamation suits for publishing what was considered as objectionable by the government.
The Nature of Internet Censorship
In most instances the methods used by Southeast Asian countries to curb the access of the internet by its populace is by blocking particular websites that are to be deemed offensive or subversive to the regimes, most of which originate from overseas countries. This blocking is implemented in two ways by centralizing all the exit points of internet communications in a country and then subjecting then ensuring that they are supervised by the authorities. The other way of blocking is by forbidding the Internet Service Providers (ISPs) in the respective country to allow the access by the public to any sites that are officially banned.
As mentioned by Hindley (2009), China is a good example of a Southeast Asian country where blocking has been used to censor internet access. Indeed internet censorship in China, is one of the most pervasive and developed system. Seemingly, cautious of the tremendous changes the internet could introduce to her social and political structure, China has closely monitored the development of the internet within its borders, even long before the internet became widely available and they began to enforce censorship in the mid 90s.
A 2008 report by the Committee to Protect Journalists reveals that the Chinese government has thousands of personnel who are monitoring internet activity on a daily basis. It based this assertion from another 2007 report released by the official Xinhua News Agency, which announced that the Ministry of Public Security will be dispatching virtual cops to Chinese major websites and also monitor all major portals and online forums. By February 2008, the Xinhua then reported that the National Office for Cleaning-up Pornography and Fighting Illegal Publications had succeeded to expunge over 200 million harmful online items in the previous year. This invariably translated into danger posed to online journalists, particularly those based in China. Currently, eighteen such journalists are in China prisons, accounting for about two-third of the journalists imprisoned in the country.
By 2009 it was reported that the Chinese government had blocked the sites of organizations like the Falun Gong those belonging to pro-Tibetan non-governmental organizations and also those of foreign news media for instance, the BBC and New York Times, which are popular amongst a section of Chinese. Besides, some other user-general content sites like Flickr, Blogger, You Tube, and Word Press have also faced similar stiff blocking from the Chinese government.
Apart from blocking, the other methods used to restrict internet access include legal restrictions. In Singapore, for instance, any internet site that carries political and religious issues regarding the country is deemed illegal unless it is authorized under the Broadcasting Class License Notification. Besides, according to the Film Act, any set of motion pictures, including those in You Tube and those uploaded in blogs are outlawed unless they have been certified by the Board of Film Censors. Subsequently, the providers of internet services are required by the law to ban any online speech that is not politically correct in regards to the ideologies of the regimes.
In Burma the government invokes the Electronic Act of 1996 to defend its political ideology and quell opposing views. The Electronic Act is a suppressive legislation in regards to the internet, television and radio, to curtail the access by the public to sites that are politically opposed to their policies. Amongst other things, this law prohibits the importation, possession and use of a modem without official permission. And anyone found guilty of breaching this law is subject to a fifteen-year jail term, for endangering the security of the state, national unity, culture, national economy and the law and order.
Consequently, various online journalists have fallen victim to this Act. In 2008, Nay Latt was imprisoned for fifteen years for possessing a subversive film. Under the same Act, Zarganar, a famous comedian got a 35 year sentence for disseminating on the internet some articles that criticized the way the Burmese government had handled the humanitarian aid after the Cyclone Nargis. Besides, in December 2009, Hla Hla Win, a video journalist was found guilty of working with a Norwegian based Democratic Voice of Burma (DVB) Television Network and was given a 20 years jail term (Reporters without Borders for Press Freedom, 2009).
Arguably, these laws are by no means in the interest of the public in the countries that they exist. As the Open Net Initiative report states, in the rush to curb the supposedly harmful effects of the social media, user-generated content and the ever increasing numbers of online commentary, the Southeast Asian governments have come up with cyber-crime laws that purport to discourage online defamation and vigilantism when in real sense they are only effective in stifling nitizen journalism.
Filtering is the other effective means used by governments in Southeast Asia to regulate the access of the internet. A report by Open Net Initiative shows that with its diversity, Southeast Asia is a stronghold for a number of organically grown models used in internet filtering. Alongside China, Singapore began its experiments of internet filtering in the mid 90s. During that period, the users of the internet were imputed to access the web through proxy servers that filtered sites, which were banned by the Singapore Broadcasting Authority (SBA). These servers were reported to have contained a database of approved material that was frequently accessed and then refused access for having appeared on an SBA list of banned web sites.
Whereas China has not made formal its filtering policy, it diverged from Singapore in aggressive filtering practices in concert to a growing internal market for internet services and content, which resulted to the public-private localized filtering. Apart from the variety of content filtered at the international gateways and through the blocking of key words, Chinese domestic providers who intend to maintain their regulatory compliance are required by law to install internal filtering mechanisms. They are also required to channel staff resources to monitor the content on their websites, without which they invariably face either civil or criminal liability.
The Impact of Internet Censorship
One of the effects of these internet censorships is continued strained relations between some of the nations of Southeast Asia and those, which sees in these restrictions as a threat of the freedom of the press. Currently, there has been a diplomatic row between China and the United States, over Chinas stringent measures in regulating the internet. This came up when the U.S Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton urged China in an online speech, to lift their restrictions on the internet to investigate cyber intrusions that had led to pull out of Google search engine out of the country and, she challenged China to publish their findings. But in a swift rejoinder appearing in the Chinese Communist Partys official newspaper, People Daily, China denounced Clintons assertion as a form of information imperialism. The paper claimed that unlike other advanced Western countries, the Chinese society is still vulnerable to the effects of multifarious inflow of ideas, particularly those aimed at creating disorder in China (Bodeen, 2010).
Google had threatened in January 2010, to withdraw from China if the government did not relent its rules on censorship of content, which the Communist Party had considered subversive. This ultimatum was a result of a discovery that Google had made, in which through a computer attack the Chinese government had tried to plunder its software coding and also destroy e-mail accounts of human rights advocating against some of the Chinese policies.
The censorship of the internet has also had a negative impact on the economy, both at the local and international level. As demonstrated by Hindley (2009), the aspect of internet censorship that affects international commerce stems from the fact that the vast majority of the internet services are normally provided as business services, thereby having a direct commercial effect on the people who have invested in that sector. And due to the fact that the internet censors and the internet service providers are mostly from different countries, the reduction in profits gains is of an international scope because it has affected business in one country, due to the internet regulations by another country.
Conclusion
The curbing of internet access by Southeast Asian state is a retrogressive act that should not be happening in this age and time. This only goes a long way into demonstrating that the governments of these countries are afraid of being accountable to their citizens and are also wary of a change in their political order. A society that is starved of information and is denied the freedom to communicate is at the brink of collapse, its economic prosperity notwithstanding.
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