Violation Of Human Rights By Censoring Internet
| Freedom of expression is the most fundamental right of every human being living in this world. Internet is a unique communication medium that provides individuals with the flexibility to express their ideas and opinion directly to the world. Internet also provides the advantage of exchanging information between people. |
However, there are countries like China where this right of exchanging information through the internet is censored, thus violating human rights.
With the sole objective of cracking down the free flow of information over the internet, Chinese government has recently blocked a number of public sites including Google, AltaVista, Microsoft and Yahoo. However, the Chinese government is not the only one entertaining such human rights violation. Recently, the U.S. Department of Defense itself had issued orders limiting the U.S. soldiers’ access to the internet. It had officially blocked thirteen popular social networking sites on government computers including Youtube.com, Pandora.com, Photobucket.com, Myspace.com and MTV.com. Other countries that are involved in filtering or blocking web pages include India, Iran, Zimbabwe, Malawi, South Africa, Kuwait, UAE, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Vietnam, Morocco, Singapore, Turkey and Thailand.
The main objective behind this practice is that countries do not want their citizens to have access to certain types of information that are considered either sensitive or confidential. Hence, when a Chinese is searching on the Google inside China, he would not be able to search successfully for information like “human rights violation in China” or “Tiananmen Square Protest”. Other issues where countries prohibit access to websites include those that have information towards insulting religion, political issues, pornography, prostitution and drugs.
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