Censorship in South Asia can apply to books, movies, the Internet and other media. Censorship occurs on religious, moral and political grounds, which is controversial in itself as the latter especially is seen as contrary to the tenets of democracy, in terms of freedom of speech and the right to freely criticise the government.
In June 2006, the government of Bangladesh issued a restraining order preventing Sigma Huda, U.N. special rapporteur on trafficking in persons, from leaving the country to deliver a key report on trafficking before the Human Rights Council in Geneva on 11 June 2007. [1] The U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Louise Arbour, 2007, asked Bangladesh to clarify corruption charges against a U.N. human rights investigator, which will prevent her from addressing the main U.N. rights body. [2] The Coalition Against Trafficking in Women issued a statement calling this "an outrage and a violation of her right to freedom of movement and freedom of speech". [1]
Selective blocking of web sites for brief periods has been reported, including:
Later these blocks were removed. [7]
Several books of the Bangladeshi writer Taslima Nasrin have been banned in Bangladesh and West Bengal. [8]
Several books critical of religion have been banned in India or in parts of India as a precautionary measure to prevent riots or other form of violence. India was the second country in the world to ban The Satanic Verses by Salman Rushdie. The book Understanding Islam through Hadis by Ram Swarup was also banned.
India is listed as engaged in selective Internet filtering in the conflict/security and Internet tools areas and no evidence of filtering was found in the political and social areas by the OpenNet Initiative (ONI) in May 2007. [9] ONI states that:
As a stable democracy with strong protections for press freedom, India’s experiments with Internet filtering have been brought into the fold of public discourse. The selective censorship of Web sites and blogs since 2003, made even more disjointed by the non-uniform responses of Internet service providers (ISPs), has inspired a clamor of opposition. Clearly government regulation and implementation of filtering are still evolving. … Amidst widespread speculation in the media and blogosphere about the state of filtering in India, the sites actually blocked indicate that while the filtering system in place yields inconsistent results, it nevertheless continues to be aligned with and driven by government efforts. Government attempts at filtering have not been entirely effective, as blocked content has quickly migrated to other Web sites and users have found ways to circumvent filtering. The government has also been criticized for a poor understanding of the technical feasibility of censorship and for haphazardly choosing which Web sites to block. The amended IT Act, absolving intermediaries from being responsible for third-party created content, could signal stronger government monitoring in the future. [9]
The OpenNet Initiative listed Internet filtering in Pakistan as substantial in the social and conflict/security areas, as selective in the Internet tools area, and as suspected in the political area in December 2010. [10]
In late 2010 Pakistanis enjoyed unimpeded access to most sexual, political, social, and religious content on the Internet. Although the Pakistani government does not employ a sophisticated blocking system, a limitation which has led to collateral blocks on entire domains such as Blogspot.com and YouTube.com, it continues to block Web sites containing content it considers to be blasphemous, anti-Islamic, or threatening to internal security. Pakistan has blocked access to websites critical of the government. [10]
In early March 2006, the government temporarily had all websites hosted at the popular blogging service Blogger.com blocked. [11] Millions of websites from all over the world are hosted at blogspot, along with thousands of Pakistani ones. This step by the government is possibly due to the Jyllands-Posten Muhammad cartoons controversy, as some blogspot websites put up copies of the cartoons.
Sri Lanka is listed as a country "under surveillance" by Reporters Without Borders in 2011. [12]
Several political and news websites, including tamilnet.com and lankanewsweb.com, have been blocked within the country. [13] Tamilnet has been producing news about the Sri Lankan civil war, focusing in the north and the east of the country, and is seen by the government as a Pro-LTTE news website. A government spokesman has said that he is looking to hire hackers to disable Tamilnet. [14]
The Sri Lanka courts have ordered hundreds of adult sites blocked to "protect women and children". [15] [16] This is no longer true as of 2017.
In February 2018 Facebook was blocked as an effort to prevent hate speech.
In October and November 2011 the Sri Lankan Telecommunication Regulatory Commission blocked the five websites, www.lankaenews.com, srilankamirror.com, srilankaguardian.com, paparacigossip9.com, and www.lankawaynews.com, for what the government alleges as publishing reports that amount to "character assassination and violating individual privacy" and damaging the character of President Mahinda Rajapaksa, ministers and senior government officials. The five sites have published material critical of the government and alleged corruption and malfeasance by politicians. [17]
Telecommunications in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) is under the control and supervision of the Telecommunications Regulatory Authority (TRA) which was established under UAE Federal Law by Decree No. 3 of 2003. From 1976 to 2006 the Emirates Telecommunications Corporation (Etisalat) was the sole telephone and telecommunications provider for the UAE. And while there were exceptions for free zones and modern housing developments, for the majority of the UAE, Etisalat held a monopoly on business and personal telecommunications services. In February 2006, this monopoly became a duopoly when a new telephone company and Internet service provider (ISP), du, was established to offer mobile services across the UAE and Internet and TV services to some free zone areas. However, due to geographical distribution of service areas, the companies do not compete for customers and thus effectively operate as monopolies. Earlier du provided triple play services to free zone areas under the name Emirates Integrated Telecommunications Company (EITC), which is still its legal name.
Internet censorship in Tunisia significantly decreased in January 2011, following the ouster of President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, as the new acting government removed filters on social networking sites such as YouTube.
The OpenNet Initiative (ONI) was a joint project whose goal was to monitor and report on internet filtering and surveillance practices by nations. The project employed a number of technical means, as well as an international network of investigators, to determine the extent and nature of government-run internet filtering programs. Participating academic institutions included the Citizen Lab at the Munk Centre for International Studies, University of Toronto; Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard Law School; the Oxford Internet Institute (OII) at University of Oxford; and, The SecDev Group, which took over from the Advanced Network Research Group at the Cambridge Security Programme, University of Cambridge.
Internet censorship in Pakistan is government control of information sent and received using the Internet in Pakistan. There have been significant instances of website access restriction in Pakistan, most notably when YouTube was banned from 2012-2016. Pakistan has asked a number of social media organisations to set up local offices within the country, but this is yet to happen.
The Pakistani Constitution limits Censorship in Pakistan, but allows "reasonable restrictions in the interests of the sovereignty and integrity of Pakistan or public order or morality". Press freedom in Pakistan is limited by official censorship that restricts critical reporting and by the high level of violence against journalists. The armed forces, the judiciary, and religion are topics that frequently attract the government's attention.
Internet censorship in India is done by both central and state governments. DNS filtering and educating service users in suggested usages is an active strategy and government policy to regulate and block access to Internet content on a large scale. Also measures for removing content at the request of content creators through court orders have become more common in recent years. Initiating a mass surveillance government project like Golden Shield Project is also an alternative discussed over the years by government bodies.
TamilNet is an online newspaper that provides news and feature articles on current affairs in Sri Lanka, specifically related to the erstwhile Sri Lankan Civil War. The website was formed by members of the Sri Lankan Tamil community residing in the United States and publishes articles in English, German and French.
Censorship in Myanmar results from government policies in controlling and regulating certain information, particularly on religious, ethnic, political, and moral grounds.
Internet censorship is the control or suppression of what can be accessed, published, or viewed on the Internet enacted by regulators, or on their own initiative. Internet censorship puts restrictions on what information can be put on the internet or not. Individuals and organizations may engage in self-censorship for moral, religious, or business reasons, to conform to societal norms, due to intimidation, or out of fear of legal or other consequences.
Internet censorship in Morocco was listed as selective in the social, conflict/security, and Internet tools areas and as no evidence in the political area by the OpenNet Initiative (ONI) in August 2009. Freedom House listed Morocco's "Internet Freedom Status" as "Partly Free" in its 2018 Freedom on the Net report.
Video-sharing platform YouTube is the second-most popular website as of August 2019, according to Alexa Internet. According to the company's press page, YouTube has more than one billion users, and each day, those users watch more than one billion hours of video. Censorship of it has occurred and continues to occur to varying degrees in most countries throughout the world.
Facebook has been replacing traditional media channels since its founding in 2004. Censorship in the media, especially on Facebook, is due to a variety of reasons, since Facebook accepts all kinds of content, with little or no moderation. Because the site indiscriminately displays material posted by users publicly, Facebook effectively can sometimes threaten oppressive governments, while also propelling fake news, hate speech and misinformation, thereby undermining the credibility of online platforms and social media. Many countries have banned or temporarily limited access to the social networking website Facebook, including Mainland China, Iran, Syria, and North Korea. Use of the website has also been restricted in various ways in other countries. As of May 2016, the only countries to ban access around the clock to the social networking site are China, Iran, Syria, and North Korea. However, since most North Korean residents have no access to the Internet, China and Iran are the only countries where access to Facebook is actively restricted in a wholesale manner.
Internet censorship in Syria is extensive. Syria bans websites for political reasons and arrests people accessing them. Filtering and blocking was found to be pervasive in the political and Internet tools areas, and selective in the social and conflict/security areas by the OpenNet Initiative in August 2009.
This list of Internet censorship and surveillance by country provides information on the types and levels of Internet censorship and surveillance that is occurring in countries around the world.
This list of Internet censorship and surveillance in Europe provides information on the types and levels of Internet censorship and surveillance that is occurring in countries in Europe.
This list of Internet censorship and surveillance in Asia provides information on the types and levels of Internet censorship and surveillance that is occurring in countries in Asia.
This list of Internet censorship and surveillance in the Americas provides information on the types and levels of Internet censorship and surveillance that is occurring in countries in the Americas.
This list of Internet censorship and surveillance in Oceania provides information on the types and levels of Internet censorship and surveillance that is occurring in countries in Oceania.
This list of Internet censorship and surveillance in Africa provides information on the types and levels of Internet censorship and surveillance that is occurring in countries in Africa.
Internet censorship in the Sri Lanka is conducted under a variety of laws, judicial processes, regulations and other. It is achieved by blocking access to sites as well as the use of laws that criminalise publication or possession of certain types of material. These include regulations against terrorism and pornography.
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