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 The speed with which the Internet has spread throughout the Middle East and North Africa testifies to the region’s appetite for alternative means of getting and transmitting information. In countries where the press is rigidly controlled, the Internet has opened a window for greater freedom of expression and communication. Anyone with access to a computer, an Internet connection, and “blogging” tools can now publish to a potential audience of millions, free of charge, within minutes.
Faced with this new technology, many regional governments have pursued contradictory policies. With varying degrees of enthusiasm, they have sought to facilitate the spread of information and communications technologies with economic benefits in mind. At the same time, they have sought to maintain their old monopolies over the flow of information.
In a Tunisian Internet café, not far from where the second phase of the World Summit on the Information Society is being held in November 2005, there hangs a portrait of President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali. This is not remarkable in itself: similar portraits hang in nearly every business in Tunis. But in this Internet café a sign posted immediately beneath the president’s likeness reads: “Opening disk drives is strictly forbidden. Do not touch the parameters of the configurations. It is forbidden to access prohibited sites. Thank you.” These “prohibited sites” include those the government blocks for publishing reports of human rights abuses in the country or criticizing the president.
The dilemma governments perceive in responding to the Internet is evident on this wall. The café exists thanks in part to the Tunisian government’s investment in fostering information technology. The restrictions speak to the Tunisian government’s desire to control information. Governments realize that they cannot live without the Internet, that to shut the country out from the World Wide Web would be to close the country to the world economy. But to one degree or another, they have also sought to control the uses of this technology.
This report examines Internet trends and policies in the Middle East and North Africa region as they affect freedom of expression, focusing particularly on Egypt, Iran, Syria, and Tunisia. Human Rights Watch selected these four countries for closer scrutiny as much for their differences as for their similarities, and their inclusion should not suggest that their policies are worse than those of other countries in the region. For each of the featured countries, Human Rights Watch examines government policies affecting Internet access, the role the Internet has played in fostering freedom of expression and civil society, laws restricting free expression, online censorship, and cases in which people have been detained for their online activities.
In countries such as Iran and Egypt, where the government began licensing private Internet service providers (ISPs) and network service providers earlier than in other countries in the region, the use of the Internet—including the use of the Internet to report news or express opinions—has grown more quickly than it has in countries such as Syria and Tunisia, which initially sought to limit the number of ISPs. In Egypt, the early entry of smaller, private ISPs that promised their customers unfiltered access to the Internet reportedly prompted the government to stop blocking hundreds of Web sites.
As this report went to press, soon after Syria’s “first privately owned ISP” started offering lessrestrictive service, one Syrian computer programmer reported that at least one of the old, government-affiliated ISPs had lifted restrictions on protocols used to build Web sites, perhaps in a bid to keep its customers from moving to the new, less-restricted ISP. Perhaps, as Tunisian Minister of Communications Technology Montasser Ouaili recently suggested to Human Rights Watch, competition does stimulate free access to the Internet.
At the same time, all of the countries surveyed in this report continue to block Web sites for their political content or for other arbitrary reasons, and all retain and misuse vaguely worded and sweeping legal provisions to imprison Internet users for expressing unpopular or critical views. The following sketch of conditions in the region shows the broader set of problems.
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Online Censorship in the Middle East and North Africa
About this Report..........................................................................................................................................1
Summary ..............................................................................................................................................2
Regional Overview ....................................................................................................................................3
Recommendations.....................................................................................................................................7
Note on Methodology ...............................................................................................................................8
Legal Standards Pertaining to Online Freedom of Expression.............................................................10
Right to Freedom of Expression and Exchange of Information......................................................10
Right to Privacy .......................................................................................................................................14
Anonymity and Encryption ....................................................................................................................15
Assigning Liability for Online Content.................................................................................................16
Internet Cafés...........................................................................................................................................17
Egypt..............................................................................................................................................................17
Access to the Internet.............................................................................................................................18
The Internet and the Human Rights Movement.................................................................................21
Internet Censorship Issues......................................................................................................................24
Morality.................................................................................................................................................25
Political Violence.................................................................................................................................26
Case Studies of Internet Repression......................................................................................................28
Shohdy Naguib Sorour........................................................................................................................28
Ashraf Ibrahim ....................................................................................................................................29
The Muslim Brotherhood...................................................................................................................30
Ahmad Haridi ......................................................................................................................................31
Iman Badawi ........................................................................................................................................32
Internet Cafés in Egypt .......................................................................................................................33
Blocking Web Sites ..............................................................................................................................34
The Library of Alexandria...................................................................................................................36
Entrapment ..........................................................................................................................................37
Legal Framework.....................................................................................................................................37
Encryption............................................................................................................................................40
Conclusion................................................................................................................................................41
Iran.................................................................................................................................................................42
Access to the Internet.............................................................................................................................43
Legal Constraints on Free Expression ..................................................................................................44
Encryption............................................................................................................................................46
Mechanisms of Internet Control............................................................................................................47
Detentions ................................................................................................................................................49
The Group Detentions of August-October 2004 ...........................................................................49
Sina Motalebi .......................................................................................................................................53
Mojtaba Lotfi .......................................................................................................................................54
Mohammad Reza Nasab Abdullahi...................................................................................................55
Mojtaba Saminejad..............................................................................................................................55
Arash Sigarchi ......................................................................................................................................56
Censorship................................................................................................................................................57
Conclusion................................................................................................................................................64
Syria................................................................................................................................................................66
Testing the Limits of Repression ...........................................................................................................67
Access to the Internet.............................................................................................................................74
Internet Cafés ......................................................................................................................................76
Legal Framework.....................................................................................................................................77
Emergency Law...................................................................................................................................77
The Press Law......................................................................................................................................79
The Supreme State Security Court.....................................................................................................82
Detentions ................................................................................................................................................82
The Political Joke ................................................................................................................................82
`Abd al-Rahman al-Shaghuri ..............................................................................................................83
Yahya al-Ous and the Qutaish Brothers...........................................................................................83
Mas`ud Hamid.....................................................................................................................................84
Habib Salih...........................................................................................................................................85
Censorship and Surveillance ...................................................................................................................85
Conclusion................................................................................................................................................89
Tunisia ...........................................................................................................................................................91
Access to the Internet.............................................................................................................................92
Legal Framework.....................................................................................................................................94
Internet Censorship.............................................................................................................................. 101
The Tests ........................................................................................................................................... 102
Internet Cafés........................................................................................................................................ 108
Surveillance............................................................................................................................................ 109
Detentions ............................................................................................................................................. 109
Zoheir Yahiaoui................................................................................................................................ 109
Mohamed Abou................................................................................................................................ 110
The Youths of Zarzis and Ariana ................................................................................................... 111
Abdallah Zouari................................................................................................................................ 113
Conclusion............................................................................................................................................. 115
Appendix A................................................................................................................................. 117
Appendix B: Government Responses .................................................................................................... 119
Human Rights Watch Translation of the Egyptian Government’s Response......................... 122
ABOUT HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH
Human Rights Watch is dedicated to protecting the human rights of people around the world.
We stand with victims and activists to prevent discrimination, to uphold political freedom, to protect people from inhumane conduct in wartime, and to bring offenders to justice.
We investigate and expose human rights violations and hold abusers accountable.
We challenge governments and those who hold power to end abusive practices and respect international human rights law.
We enlist the public and the international community to support the cause of human rights for all.
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