Just a little bit ironic

This conference is a leadup to the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) that's happening in Tunisia this fall. The Tunisian ambassador to Canada has been here the whole conference (and some other guy from the Tunisian gov.) and he was a member of the welcoming commitee. The thing is - the internet in Tunisia is censored, so that Tunisians can't even visit the websites of the groups that will be at the conference. There's this human rights guy from Tunisia and he keeps on bringing it up, and then the Minister get's all huffy and has to go and clear his government from blame. The tunisian government has 17 people in jail for visiting "illegal" websites (according to some guy at the mike).

Now the head of Unesco Canada - Max Wyman - is saying that it's not an appropriate issue for this group, that we should only be concerned with the document that we are going to deliver to the WSIS conference, and that this stuff should be left up to the Foreign Affairs office. Oops - now someone from Reporters without Borders is coming up to the mike. This could get ugly ;-) (Their site is one of those blocked in Tunisia).

Also, in case you didn't know, Nortel is responsable for building the censoring technology in Tunisian as well as China. Apparently they are building a way to sensor sms messages - because China asked for it (China didn't like all those people sending out sms messages about that whole "SARS" thing).

Source : mtl3p, 14.05.2005

See also : WSIS, censorship & RSF, 14.05.2005

En français, consultez :
Le paradoxe de la Tunisie, 17.05.2005
La censure se raidit au pays du SMSI, Reporter sans frontières, 03.03.2005