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UN Officials Remove Poster Mentioning Chinese Firewall

Posted by kdawson on from the can-you-spell-hypocricy dept.

At a UN-sponsored Internet Governance Forum in Egypt, anti-censorship group Open Net Initiative was startled by a demand from UN officials to remove a poster mentioning Chinese Net censorship. When ONI refused the request, security personnel arrived and took away the poster. The group was promoting a new book, Access Controlled, a survey of Internet censorship, filtering, and online surveillance. A witness said, "The poster was thrown on the floor and we were told to remove it because of the reference to China and Tibet. We refused, and security guards came and removed it. The incident was witnessed by many." Here is a video of the removal.

3 of 409 comments (clear)

  1. Places not to hold an Internet Governance Forum by sakdoctor · · Score: 5, Informative

    http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d2/Internet_blackholes_en.png

  2. Undemocratic? by mc6809e · · Score: 5, Informative

    "We condemn this undemocratic act of censoring our event... "

    The UN is a democratic organization and this act of censorship is completely democratic. It's wrong, but democratic.

    That should be a lesson to those that confuse freedom and democracy.

  3. I've seen this firsthand. by Jeian · · Score: 5, Informative

    A few years ago, as a student, I got to go visit the UN's Geneva campus, sponsored by one of the various non-governmental organizations (NGOs) that has a presence at the UN. While I was there, I got to go sit in on one of the meetings regarding the formation of the Human Rights Commission. (Committee? Council? I can't remember.) During the meeting, representatives from one of the other NGOs in attendance started to hand out flyers encouraging action in Darfur.

    The representative from Sudan was not pleased with this, to say the least, and demanded they cease distributing the flyers. The NGO in question was informed that they were not to do that, and that they'd be removed if they continued to do so.

    The UN is a farce when it comes to doing anything useful about human rights.