Friday 12th of March; World Day Against Cyber Censorship

I would like to admit, that a couple of months ago, I would have not imagined Friday the 12th of March to be a significant day at all. Today, however, the tables have turned and this Friday will be of major importance for bloggers all over Jordan and even the world. This Friday will mark both "Blog for Jordan Day" and "World Day Against Cyber Censorship". My main focus in this post will be about the latter.

The idea of discussing "World Day Against Cyber Censorship" would not have occurred to me had it not been for Naseem Tarawnah, author of "The Black Iris of Jordan", who posted about the subject and made it clear what the day meant in his post "Dear Jordanian Bloggers & Tweeps: Let’s Mobilize For March 12th".

I can't say I am an expert on the subject, but the moment I decided to look into it I found the shocking statistics that there are actually countries that are totally against Internet  and the web, nicknamed "Internet Enemies". I was honestly relieved to find out that Jordan was not in the list and was highly ranked in the regions Internet Freedom Index. The bigger shock was to find the majority of our neighboring Arab countries listed as "Internet Enemies", with the Index describing their Internet connections as being more or less of an Intranet, in other words a local network of sites with some exceptions. Of these countries were neighboring Egypt, Syria and Saudi Arabia.

Arab countries that were listed to be "Under Surveillance" by the government included Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates, and Yemen. It was also a surprise to find Australia listed to be under surveillance; being one of the largest and most influential countries in the world, I would have thought it hardly plausible.

Now you might be asking, "So what if these countries are "Internet Enemies", or "Under Surveillance"?". Well if you wouldn't prefer to be jailed for speaking your mind on the web, as was the case with an Egyptian blogger not a while back, you would rather not be under those lists. In my opinion, I really think these "Internet Freedom" indexes should be linked with a country's "Freedom of Speech" index; that is if they haven't been linked already.

Jordan, nonetheless, wasn't a perfect country in the Index. For example newspaper columnist Mwaffaq Mahadin and Sufian Tell, a specialist in environmental issues, were held for 15 days for criticizing the assistance which the Jordanian intelligence services provide the United States in its fight against Al-Qaeda.

"Reporters Without Borders" is concerned about a ruling by Jordan’s highest appeal court, published on 13 January, that news websites and electronic media are subject to the country’s press and publications law. Media and communications minister Nabil Al-Sharif told the Jordan Times that the court’s decision was reached independently and should therefore be applied.

All in all, I urge all Jordanian bloggers to make this a subject of one of their posts. If not, a logo and slogan can be obtained and placed on your web space to show your support for the campaign.