Global Press Freedoms Hit New Low: Burma and North Korea Lead From The Bottom

May 032011
 
Washington based information freedom watchdog Freedom House released a study this week showing a worldwide decline in access to a free media.
While most of the crackdowns came in the middle east the Asian region had two of the ten worst offenders in the list in Burma and North Korea.
Thailand, Cambodia and China were also found to have a declining free press and restrictive online access.
The reports summary states: The number of people worldwide with access to free and independent media declined to its lowest level in over a decade.

Singapore’s Censorship And Repression Is No Model For The Rest Of Asia

Apr 282011
 

Singapore is seen by many Asian leaders as their ideal society – economically prosperous, first world health care, orderly and in the firm control of an upper class elite which can bend the rules when it suits them.

The material benefits that ordinary Singaporeans enjoy from such a system come at a price: an authoritarian government, widespread censorship, intolerance of dissent or criticism – it is the proverbial gilded cage.

From China’s former leader, Deng Xiaoping to Vietnam’s current rulers Singapore’s wealth and social control are a model to aspire to but is it one that has a long term future?

Malaysian lawyer and democracy activist, R Kengadharan, who has enjoyed a lengthy stay in his country’s jail under in the Internal Security Act for his pursuit of human rights argues in Free Malaysia Today that an open society with a free flow of information and a vigorous oposition  is necessary for Singapore like any country to survive.

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The United States Pumping Millions Of Dollars Into Online Free Speech Initiatives

Feb 162011
 

The Obama administration announced it was backing cyber dissidents and online democracy activists with $25m to help them overcome barriers such as China’s great firewall.

In making the announcement Secretary of State, Hillary Rodham Clinton, said the initiative demonstrated that the U.S. was standing with netizens who are pushing for democratic reform from the Middle East to China and beyond.

Matt Lee from the Associate Press reported that Clinton  pledged to expand the Obama administration’s efforts to foil Internet repression in autocratic states.

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