Censorship and Self-Censorship

Information Society: Voices from the South

Summary of discussions on the topic
'Freedom, rights, laws and ethics'

Prepared by Partha Pratim Sarker
Co-editor, Bytes for All
& Moderator, Information Society Discussion Forum

Time Frame: June 16 to July 31, 2003
Number of Subscribers (Until July 31): 372 members

Main theme line of discussion

2. Freedom, rights, laws and ethics: How to address these issues for Information Society in the South?

Sub-topics:

(2.A.) Community and Freedom
(2.B.) Development and Self-Expression
(2.C.) Issue of Censorship and Self-Censorship
(2.D.) Issue of Patent and Copyright
(2.E.) Wi-fi, Internet and other technology issues
(2.F.) Right to Communicate

Barbara Fillip brought an interesting issue of 'self-censorship' following her course on 'ICTs for Developing Countries'. She mentioned about three point observation through which she found some sorts of self-censorship practices in many participants from developing countries. Like for example, 'one participant was discussing about 'his/her country’s government’s attempts to control access and uses of the Internet and limit freedom of expression …. No comment is added by the participant, perhaps to avoid showing support for the views expressed in the article'. Another observation was that one of the course participants 'wants to share what is going on in his/her country regarding the government’s attempts to limit freedom of expression and access to communication channels. He/she writes a short essay documenting what is going on in the country, but asks me to post the message so that he/she is not directly identified as the person who posted the message'. Many even avoided to talk on the topic.

While replying to this issue, Prashant Sharma tried to challenge some of the stereo-typical ideas or pre-occupations of self-censorship. As he writes, 'Censorship is often equated with powerful authoritarian regimes, centralized information structures, Draconian laws, and so on. Tanks in Tiananmen Square, big brother, Khmer Rouge, and red flags, KGB... Or people quietly going about their jobs, stealing glances over their shoulders, using code to speak to each other and so on. Associated with these are the corresponding images of a free society - where films can talk about anything, where newspapers are free to report what they like, protest movements etc.

He believes that these images and associations are actually created by Western sources and are established in such a way that we even can't think that these are creations. So there should be a cultural appropriation of the word of censorship. Like for example, 'a child in a school in the West may be able to say that the teacher is a fool, but a child in an Indian school may not say the same thing'. He also argues that alongside censorship other form of control also works best when it comes from within. This could take the simple form of "respect your teachers irrespective of their intellectual abilities" or in some places, never speak your mind for political retribution may follow. To him, censorship is cultural, political and as well as an economic term. He believes, 'poverty is the greatest censor and inhibitor to freedom'. He thinks 'information society' itself offers visions of freedom of expression, and access to knowledge and information, but 'unless we deal with the two questions of whose knowledge and information, and who will have access to it anyway, we may just keep walking down the same road, which takes us to the same places'.

Paul Swider views the issue differently and expresses the arguments that the South doesn't need to follow the Northern models and rather can avoid all the mistakes the North has made and the problems these have created. 'South need not go through an industrial, oil-based phase of development that begets such misguided foreign policies and screwed up political systems...It can, if it chooses, literally leapfrog not just to catch up to the North but to vault beyond it to a renewable-energy, information-based economy'. He thinks, 'without being isolationist, a country of the South could simply choose an individual path devoid of dependency on the North or longing for its markets, money and power. It is possible to create a self-sustaining (not self-contained) system in the South and let the North whither of its own'.

But that too can be wishful thinking as Guido Sohne brought the issues of international politics and power, to the whole dimension of rights, laws and censorship. He expressed his concern that most users in the Third World are being monitored and recorded through sophisticated networks and devices that intercept international voice, email and web traffic. 'We have also been deprived of our ability to control who receives our information by the effects of US and European policies on data encryption'.

Censorship and freedom of expression issue has been critically examined by Rajeshwari Raj from India, as she thinks this as a way of exploitation to the poor. She cited the example of India, as she says, a group goes to remote places, talk to people, learn from them, strategize their needs, emotions and behavioral aspects, and then create products to be able to link them with the world. But at the end, day what they get out of such a deal is so small, because there emerges a whole lot of intermediaries who want a piece in the pie.

Vitalicy Chifwepa from Zambia tried to understand what self-censorship might come from. She says, 'if the censorship is driven by some fear of what would really happen due to the controls of the country I would not want to call it self censorship. Rather cases where one simply fears what might happen or that they would labelled a trouble maker and would rather someone else did that is self censorship'.

Go to other sub-topics:

Information Society: Voices from the South is an online discussion forum run by Digital Opportunity Channel in partnership with Bytes for All. The forum will run until December 2003 and will discuss a number of broad themes related to the emerging information society and the process of the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS).