A cyber-dissident is a professional journalist, an activist or

citizen journalist Citizen journalism, also known as collaborative media, participatory journalism, democratic journalism, guerrilla journalism, grassroots journalism, or street journalism, is based upon members of the community playing an active role in the pro ...

who posts news, information, or commentary on the

internet The Internet (or internet) is the Global network, global system of interconnected computer networks that uses the Internet protocol suite (TCP/IP) to communicate between networks and devices. It is a internetworking, network of networks ...

that implies criticism of a

government A government is the system or group of people governing an organized community, generally a State (polity), state. In the case of its broad associative definition, government normally consists of legislature, executive (government), execu ...

regime In politics, a regime (also spelled régime) is a system of government that determines access to public office, and the extent of power held by officials. The two broad categories of regimes are democratic and autocratic. A key similarity acros ...

. At least two nonprofit organizations are currently working to raise awareness of the contributions of cyber-dissidents and to defend them against the

human rights Human rights are universally recognized Morality, moral principles or Social norm, norms that establish standards of human behavior and are often protected by both Municipal law, national and international laws. These rights are considered ...

violations to which some of them are subjected:

Global Voices Online Global Voices is an international community of writers, bloggers and digital activists that aim to translate and report on what is being said in citizen media worldwide. It is a non-profit project started at the Berkman Center for Internet and S ...

and

Reporters Without Borders Reporters Without Borders (RWB; ; RSF) is an international non-profit and non-governmental organisation, non-governmental organization headquartered in Paris, which focuses on safeguarding the right to freedom of information. It describes its a ...

. The latter has released a ''Handbook For Bloggers and Cyber-Dissidents'' and maintains a roster of currently imprisoned cyber-dissidents. In regions where print and

broadcast Broadcasting is the data distribution, distribution of sound, audio audiovisual content to dispersed audiences via a electronic medium (communication), mass communications medium, typically one using the electromagnetic spectrum (radio waves), ...

media are tightly controlled,

anonymous Anonymous may refer to: * Anonymity, the state of an individual's identity, or personally identifiable information, being publicly unknown ** Anonymous work, a work of art or literature that has an unnamed or unknown creator or author * Anonym ...

online postings by cyber-dissidents may be the only source of information about the experiences, feelings, and opinions of ordinary citizens. This advantage may be offset by the difficulty in assessing the

good faith In human interactions, good faith () is a sincere intention to be fair, open, and honest, regardless of the outcome of the interaction. Some Latin phrases have lost their literal meaning over centuries, but that is not the case with , which i ...

and accuracy of reports originating from anonymous sources. Recently, social-media tools have been widely credited with igniting pervasive social upheavals, some of which have even brought down governments.

Persecution

Gabon

In 1998 Dr. Daniel Mengara, a

Gabon Gabon ( ; ), officially the Gabonese Republic (), is a country on the Atlantic coast of Central Africa, on the equator, bordered by Equatorial Guinea to the northwest, Cameroon to the north, the Republic of the Congo to the east and south, and ...

ese scholar and activist living

New Jersey New Jersey is a U.S. state, state located in both the Mid-Atlantic States, Mid-Atlantic and Northeastern United States, Northeastern regions of the United States. Located at the geographic hub of the urban area, heavily urbanized Northeas ...

, created a website called ''Bongo Doit Partir'' (Bongo Must Go) to encourage a revolution against the regime of Omar Bongo in Gabon. In July 2003,

Amnesty International Amnesty International (also referred to as Amnesty or AI) is an international non-governmental organization focused on human rights, with its headquarters in the United Kingdom. The organization says that it has more than ten million members a ...

reported the arrest of five Gabonese known to be members of ''Bongo Doit Partir''. The members were detained for three months.

China

In 2003, Cai Lujun was imprisoned for posting a series of articles online under the pen name "盼民主" ("expecting for democracy") criticizing the Chinese government.

Egypt

In 2006, several

blog A blog (a Clipping (morphology), truncation of "weblog") is an informational website consisting of discrete, often informal diary-style text entries also known as posts. Posts are typically displayed in Reverse chronology, reverse chronologic ...

gers in Egypt were arrested for allegedly defaming the president

Hosni Mubarak Muhammad Hosni El Sayed Mubarak (; 4 May 1928 – 25 February 2020) was an Egyptian politician and military officer who served as the fourth president of Egypt from 1981 to 2011 and the 41st Prime Minister of Egypt, prime minister from 1981 to ...

and expressing critical views about Islam

Iran

In 2005, Mohamad Reza Nasab Abdolahi was imprisoned for publishing an open letter to Ayatollah Ali Khamenei; Mohamad's pregnant wife and other bloggers who commented on Mohamad's treatment were also imprisoned.

Palestine

In October 2019, a Palestinian court blocked access to 59 websites that were identified as critical of the Palestinian Authority. According to the ruling, these websites published material that "threaten national security and civil peace".

Russia

When Russian president

Vladimir Putin Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin (born 7 October 1952) is a Russian politician and former intelligence officer who has served as President of Russia since 2012, having previously served from 2000 to 2008. Putin also served as Prime Minister of Ru ...

in 2006 called on his nation's women to have more children, journalist Vladimir Rakhmankov published a satiric article on the Internet calling Putin "''the nation's phallic symbol''". Rakhmankov was found guilty of offending Vladimir Putin, and fined by the court of the region he lived in to the sum equal of US$680. The overall story served as a good adversiting for Rakhmanov's article, that was republished by numerous Russian sources afterwards. Three Russian bloggers has supposed in 2003, that Russian state security service FSB, the main successor to the

KGB The Committee for State Security (, ), abbreviated as KGB (, ; ) was the main security agency of the Soviet Union from 1954 to 1991. It was the direct successor of preceding Soviet secret police agencies including the Cheka, Joint State Polit ...

, created special teams of people who appear on various blogs to harass and intimidate

political blog A blog (a Clipping (morphology), truncation of "weblog") is an informational website consisting of discrete, often informal diary-style text entries also known as posts. Posts are typically displayed in Reverse chronology, reverse chronologic ...

gers and thus effectively prevent free discussion of undesirable subjects. They referred to such tactics are known as " active measures". A Russian critic of this theory has noted, in 2003, that security services have more important tasks than flooding in forums.

References

External links

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Global Voices OnlineHuman Rights Watch: Free Expression and the Internet
{{Citizen journalism Technology in society Internet-based activism