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U.N. 'Internet anti-censorship conference' participants get censored.


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Those who control the World, control the destruction of our rights and freedoms everywhere.

http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/1562195/anti-internet-censorship-conference-censored

Anti-Internet censorship conference is censored

UN orders posters taken down

By Ed Berridge

Monday, 16 November 2009, 11:21

THE UN has revealed itself to be in favor of censorship, at least when China is involved.

The United Nations sponsored an Internet Governance Forum in Sharm El Sheikh, Egypt. As part of the conference an anti-Internet censorship group was disrupted by a gang of UN officials who demanded removal of a poster that mentioned Internet firewalls in China.

At the heart of the UN's problems was a poster advertising "Access Controlled", a book being introduced at the event.

The poster was thrown on the floor and protesters were told to remove it because of the reference to China and Tibet. They refused, so security guards came and removed it.

All this happened in front of bemused witnesses. What angered the UN was a sentence that read, "The first generation of Internet controls consisted largely of building firewalls at key Internet gateways; China's famous 'Great Firewall of China' is one of the first national Internet filtering systems."

Ron Deibert, director of the Citizen Lab at the University of Toronto's Munk Centre for International Studies said that it was bizarre that people were not allowed to discuss Internet censorship and surveillance policy at a forum about Internet governance.

Deibert has filed a complaint against the censorship of the event and sent it to the United Nations Human Rights Commission.

He said it was an undemocratic act to censor the event just because someone was trying to butter up the Chinese government.

The UN stance is a little odd because it has previously expressed concern over the human rights situation in Tibet and Eastern Turkestan.

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