As Egypt enters a seventh day of open revolt against the rule of President Hosni Mubarak, the country’s internet access continues to be largely shut down. That extended closure is one of the clearest signs that Mubarak still sees this as a fight he can win. (more…)
Terms like Falun Gong, the Tiananmen Square Massacre and the names of high profile Chinese dissidents have long been censored in China, but now it’s the turn of country names.
A search on Weibo — a twitter-like service owned by Sina — for the words “Egypt” or “Tunisia” in Chinese returns the message: “According to relevant laws, regulations and policies, the search results cannot be shown.” The names of the countries in English are not blocked.
News wires are reporting that Sohu’s microblog has also blocked searches for Egypt.
The state news services, though, are covering the protests in both countries and regular searches on online Chinese search engines are not blocking the words.
This new and curious development follows recent anti-government protests in both countries. Riots in major Egyptian cities including Cairo and Alexandria have left more than 100 people dead. The unrest in Tunisia toppled the president. Protests are continuing over the choice of ministers for the interim government.
Global Voices Online is reporting that some Chinese bloggers have set up regular updates of Egyptian news on Weibo which comes up in searches for “Egypt” in English.
The censorship all seems a bit over the top. As one China-based western blogger observed: “Anything is possible, I suppose, but the very idea of Chinese activists being so inspired by the riots in Egypt that they’d try to implement the same tactics in China is so absurd it’s laughable.”
Index on Censorship is gravely concerned at the loss of life and injury to protesters on the sixth day of the popular uprising in Egypt. According to the most recent reports, at least 100 people have died and thousands have been injured since the protests against President Mubarak’s regime began last Tuesday.
The Egyptian people have lived under emergency laws for 30 years, with their rights to freedom of expression and assembly constrained. The mass protests across the country are an unprecedented demand for political reform and social justice, without parallel in the recent history of the country. We urge President Mubarak to restrain from using force and to respond to the Egyptian people’s demands with long overdue reform.
Index in Censorship also condemns attempts to control and disrupt the media and electronic communication. The government closed down al Jazeera’s broadcasts in Egypt today and has severed internet access. This is a move to deprive the Egyptian public of vital information and the ability to communicate with each other. Index would remind President Mubarak that Egypt’s own constitution guarantees the right to freedom of expression and assembly, and request that he lift the state of emergency that stands in the way of all democratic reform as a matter of urgency.
The cell phones started working this morning again, although I’m not sure they’ll stay that way. The internet (as of 7pm local time) was still blocked. The fact that one but not the other has been restored perhaps indicates that the government views the internet as a larger threat than phone calls and text messages.
Whatever the logic, its worth noting that all these government attempts to restrict communications did very little to hinder the protesters yesterday and today.
The #Jan25 Day of Rage that kicked off the current waves of civil unrest rocking President Hosni Mubarak’s government DID employ Facebook, Twitter and text messaging as crucial tools. Last minute notifications on where to gather went out electronically at first. And all through the day on 25 January, protesters used Twitter to coordinate, offer each other encouragement and get news about protests happening elsewhere. When clashes happened in Suez or Alexandria, the protesters in Tahrir instantly knew and took heart from it. If there was thousands fighting the reach the square, they knew that too.
But if protests on 25 January took place in the context of a veritable flood of information, yesterday’s massive demonstrations happened in a literal vacuum. Suddenly dragged back to the land-line communications era, the protesters didn’t know about Alexandria or Suez; they didn’t even know what was happening across the river.
It didn’t matter. Protest organisers basically bypassed the idea of coordination altogether and just told people “Protest everywhere.”
In anything, the information vacuum may have ended up sharpening the wills of the demonstrators. With no idea of the situation anywhere else in Egypt, protesters had no choice by to fight like hell for whatever public patch of ground they were standing on—and then fight their way through to the next patch of ground.
All through the day Friday and deep into the night, Cairo seemed to have reverted to a word-of-mouth storyteller society. If you were walking in the street and you saw protesters coming the other direction, you asked them where they were coming from and what the situation was like there.
The shutdown also didn’t manage to stop the world’s media from effectively conveying the story to the world. Correspondents generally found a way to get online or, in many cases, reverted to the old-school practice of dictating their stories and notes to the newsroom over a landline.
Perhaps the largest impact was that many photographers and videographers have amazing images and footage trapped on their cameras with no way to get them out. I personally know several people in this situation.
When the government does finally lift the country-wide internet blockade, look for an absolute flood of imagery to instantly start flowing.