Press Freedom Watch Group Names Worst Violators of Internet Freedom
November 8, 2006
Reporters Without Borders: List of the 13 Internet enemies in 2006 published

The press freedom group Reporters without Borders has released their annual “roll of shame,” a listing reserved “for countries that systematically violate online free expression.”  Three countries have improved internet freedom enough that they have been removed from the list.  Nepal, Maldives and Libya all made advances to be left off the list, while blogger harassment and imprisonment has put Egypt on the roll of the shame. 

The countries that made the list are: Belarus, Burma, China, Cuba, Egypt, Iran, North Korea, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Tunisia, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan and Vietnam. 

Notable the report calls North Korea the “world’s worst Internet black whole,” where even few governmental officials have access to the internet.  Throughout the Middle East the report cites widespread blocking of millions of “immoral” web sites.  Syria provides “the Middle East’s biggest prison for cyber dissidents,” who are “systematically tortured.” 

Burma and Vietnam have been called “more repressive” than China in internet censoring, but China is called “the world’s most advanced country in Internet filtering.”  The report also cites that there are currently over 50 people imprisoned in China for “expressing themselves too freely online.” 

In 2006 the governments in Libya and Nepal discontinued their efforts to censor the internet allowing the countries to be removed from the world’s worst offenders.  In Maldives “no cyber dissident has been imprisoned” since February 2006, though it is not complete uncensored, “policies towards the Internet no long justify” a position on the roll of shame.