The Internet is a new frontier in the struggle for human rights. Amnesty International has launched a campaign to highlight online censorship. The campaign is called Irrepressible and the main objective is to show that the human voice and human rights are impossible to repress, offline or online. And you can help.

The web is a tool for change in many ways. It makes sharing of ideas easy and instantaneous and in this way it enables freedom of expression.

Governments censor the Internet
However, governments that lack a solid democratic basis often fear the free expressions of their countries’ citizens. There are reports of Internet repression China, Vietnam, Tunisia, Iran, Saudi Arabia and Syria, among others.

In these countries, people are persecuted for criticizing their government or calling for democracy and freedom of expression online.

Too close for comfort
Internet repression is not just about foreign governments. These regimes have the help of IT companies to build the systems that enable surveillance and censorship to take place. Yahoo!, Microsoft and Google have all complied with government demands to actively censor Chinese users of their services.

These are household names for webmasters, search engine marketers and bloggers. Many are provoked by the way they indulge oppressors to make a profit.

You can help
You can help to send a message to Governments who censor the web and the IT companies who help them.

Sign Irrepressible’s pledge on Internet freedom.

If you have a web site or blog you can undermine censorship by publishing irrepressible fragments of censored material on your own site, like the green banner below (they come in different formats).

For more information, read Amnesty’s report Undermining freedom of expression in China. The role of Yahoo!, Microsoft and Google (in pdf format).

Or read this excellent article in The Observer: Today, our chance to fight a new hi-tech tyranny.

Pandia articles on Internet censoring in China:

• China’s search engine censorship continues
• Internet filtering in China
• Reactions to Google’s censored search results in China
• Microsoft deletes outspoken Chinese blog
• Yahoo! helped China jail journalist
• Yahoo!, China and the freedom of expression
• Online tool reveals Google’s censoring of Chinese search results