Wednesday 23 April 2008

World press freedom day

If you have a minute or two to spare on Saturday 3rd May, you're invited pop in to FUSION Organic Cafe, corner Aplin & Grafton Streets.

There you can sign, write or donate, to the 'Uncensor' project to protest the limitations on the media (including internet) in China.

It is part of Amnesty Australia's focus this year on issues of human rights in China.

Cairns-based Dr Carole Ford says that many countries do not have the freedom of speech that we enjoy in Australia. In China people are in prison for using the internet to send out information on human rights abuses.

Access to many news websites is blocked. 30 journalists and at least 50 internet users are known to be in jail in China right now. Many are beaten and tortured to extract ‘confessions’.

Whereas in Cairns, you used to only get sued every five minutes from the previous mayor for raising issues about city councillors travelling to China!

Reporters Without Borders ranks China's media situation as 'very serious', the worst ranking on their five-point scale. China's Internet censorship policy is labeled as 'pervasive' by the OpenNet Initiative's global Internet filtering map, also the worst ranking used.

China's Internet censorship is regarded by many as the most pervasive and sophisticated in the world. According to a Harvard study, at least 18,000 websites are blocked from within the country. Banned sites have included Wikipedia, Google, YouTube, Flickr, and even the BBC.

You can get more info from Janet Walder or telephone her on 4053 3426

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Stuff China! How about the censorship that occurs when anyone dares suggest is Israel is something less than perfect. This happens all over the Global media, far worse than anything China can come up with. Why is Tibet so fashionable, but Israel's genocide of Palestine remains untouchable? is it a "race"thing, or money thing?

sunfish said...

China sucks , we are all linked to this . China is the worlds factory , we all benefit from cost cheap manufactured items produced there. Such items are really expensive in terms of human and environmental degradation .

Anonymous said...

Perhaps the press should be spared a thought each time they get censored or threatened with death for printing something about Mohammed or Jihad or Islam.