Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
Central Asian internet censorship takes a variety of forms, and is typically
justified through the excuses of protecting public morality from decadent or anti-
Islamic ideas or combating terrorism and Islamist extremism. In Afghanistan,
internet usage only began in 2001 following the ouster of the Taliban, which held
that the web allowed foreign and anti-Islamic obscenities to enter the country.
During the 2005 parliamentary elections, the government of Kyrgyzstan launched
''just-in-time'' distributed denial of service cyberattacks against opposition party
websites, and the government closed internet connections to neighboring countries
(Schwartz
2005
). The Kyrgyz government's botnet used to launch the attacks also
affected servers in the U.S., whose protests then forced the attacks to cease.
Despite its severe control over non-digital media, Kyrgyz cyberspace is relatively
deregulated and the government has relatively straightforward rules governing
internet access,
which
may
reflect
its
reliance
on foreign
aid
organizations
(McGlinchey and Johnson
2007
; Srinivasan and Fish
2009
).
A growing community of Central Asian cyberactivists resists these attempts
(see EurasiaNet.org). Across Central Asia, netizens have struggled to protect
internet freedoms, including Uzbekistan (Machleder
2002
), where the Uzbek ''For
a Free Internet!'' campaign has monitored bills in the lower house of parliament,
the Mazhlis, which attempted to extend the government's censorship. In
Kyrgyzstan, the internet and other media played an instrumental role in the Tulip
Revolution of 2005 that led to the ousting of President Askar Akayev. The Tajik
government's attempts to criminalize some forms of cyber-speech as libel against
the state were met with heated opposition led by Nuriddin Qarshiboev, head of the
National Association for Independent Media in Tajikistan. Moreover, Tajik cyber-
journalists petitioned the government to abolish the requirement that the president
be called ''worthy'' and ''reliable'' every time he was mentioned. More recently,
those seeking to avoid government censorship can download software designed to
help them do so, such as the Canadian ''censorship circumvention'' program
Psiphon.
While Azeri internet provision is highly centralized via two state-owned ISPs,
the Azeri web remains relatively free from government filtering. Nonetheless,
when two Azeri bloggers posted a video ridiculing the government's purchase of
high-priced donkeys, they were arrested (Barry
2009
).
The internet has also been used against the state in several such countries.
Between 2003 and 2005, Ukraine, Georgia, and Kyrgyzstan all experienced ''color
revolutions,'' in which opposition parties utilized the web as an integral part of
their strategy and suffered just-in-time blocking by their governments (Warf
2009
).
A growing community of Eurasian cyberactivists resists internet censorship (see
Eurasianet.org). The Uzbek ''For a Free Internet!'' campaign, for example, has
monitored bills in the lower house of parliament, the Mazhlis, which attempt to
extend the government's censorship. The Tajik government's attempts to crimi-
nalize some forms of cyber-speech as libel against the state were met with heated
opposition led by Nuriddin Qarshiboev, head of the National Association for
Independent Media in Tajikistan. Moreover, Tajik cyber-journalists petitioned the
government to abolish the requirement that the president be called ''worthy'' and
