CPJ Report: 10 Worst Countries to be a Blogger

10 Worst Countries to be a Blogger
<http://www.cpj.org/reports/2009/04/10-worst-countries-to-be-a-blogger.php>

CPJ names the worst online oppressors. Booming online cultures in many Asian
and Middle Eastern nations have led to aggressive government repression. Burma
leads the dishonor roll.

New York, April 30, 2009—With a military government that severely restricts
Internet access and imprisons people for years for posting critical material,
Burma is the worst place in the world to be a blogger, the Committee to
Protect Journalists says in a new report. CPJ's "10 Worst Countries to be a
Blogger" also identifies a number of countries in the Middle East and Asia
where Internet penetration has blossomed and government repression has grown
in response.

"Bloggers are at the vanguard of the information revolution and their numbers
are expanding rapidly," said CPJ Executive Director Joel Simon. "But
governments are quickly learning how to turn technology against bloggers by
censoring and filtering the Internet, restricting online access and mining
personal data. When all else fails, the authorities simply jail a few bloggers
to intimidate the rest of the online community into silence or self-censorship."

Relying on a mix of detentions, regulations, and intimidation, authorities in
Iran, Syria, Saudi Arabia, Tunisia, and Egypt have emerged as the leading
online oppressors in the Middle East and North Africa. China and Vietnam,
where burgeoning blogging cultures have encountered extensive monitoring and
restriction, are among Asia's worst blogging nations. Cuba and Turkmenistan,
nations where Internet access is heavily restricted, round out the dishonor roll.

"The governments on the list are trying to roll back the information
revolution, and, for now, they are having success," Simon added. "Freedom of
expression groups, concerned governments, the online community, and technology
companies need to come together to defend the rights of bloggers around the
world."

CPJ issued its report to mark World Press Freedom Day, May 3, and to call
attention to online repression, a great emerging threat to press freedom
worldwide. CPJ considers bloggers whose work is reportorial or fact-based
commentary to be journalists. In 2008, CPJ found, bloggers and other online
journalists were the single largest professional group in prison, overtaking
print and broadcast journalists for the first time.

In compiling this list, CPJ studied conditions for bloggers in countries
around the world. CPJ staff consulted with Internet experts to develop eight
criteria that included governments' use of filtering, monitoring, and
regulation; authorities' use of imprisonments and other forms of legal
harassment to deter critical blogging; and the extent and openness of Internet
access. For further explanation of CPJ's methodology, click here.
<http://www.cpj.org/reports/2009/04/10-worst-countries-to-be-a-blogger.php#method>

--snip--