[governance] China: "we don't agree that the IGF should continue"

[Carlos Afonso]

On the other hand, it seems "WSIS II -- The Mission" might be coming by,
as the ITU's sponsored meeting of this coming week seems to be
considering, among other issues. And we might have an "IGF Part II" and
so on. I do hope not -- it is about time the world converges to a far
more extensive international IG structure.

Most of us (not all, which is sad) in this list are shocked by the
French decisions to run over several laws and rights to suppress
Internet users in summary "executions" (motivated centrally by the cozy
relationship of Monsieur Sarkozy with a French media mogul). One can
imagine what Berlusconi (himself *the* Italian media mogul) can and will
do, since he seems to hold the hearts and minds of the Italians in his
hands. And the Brits seem to be going along.

Worse, what are the aftershocks in developing countries' governments
throughout the world of these processes in the so-called "Western
democracies"? We are right now in Brazil fighting against draconian
bills of law which would in practice eliminate the Internet as we know
it. And we are left with the chatting and tea-partying of the IGF as the
international forum to try and do something -- i.e, left with nearly
nothing in practice to confront this razzia of violations against basic
human rights.

I remember the jokes the Europeans liked to tell to us Brazilians about
the group of "like-minded countries" during the WGIG process. After all,
Brazil is a representative democracy just llike us, what are you doing,
aligning yourself with Iran, China and so on? I now return the question,
sadly, as Europe seems to be joining happily, step by step, the likes of
China and Saudi Arabia regarding fundamental human rights on the Internet.

frt rgds

--c.a.

Ian Peter wrote:
> This wont be the end of the calls for IGF to be abandoned. One ISOC trustee
> (speaking as an individual) was saying the same thing today. And once the
> decision making gets out of the sympathetic enclave of IGF attendees a whole
> lot of people who don't know much about it are likely to follow calls from
> entities like ITU and China. This will include decision makers in
> governments who currently appear to be sympathetic.
>
> It doesn't look like IGF will be taking the sort of actions that might help
> to promote its position and effectiveness among those who will make
> decisions on this (no communications campaign, no structured evaluation
> etc).
>
> So I don't think the outcome is a foregone conclusion and we can write off
> the Chinese position as a rogue one. This is likely to have some more
> interesting twists and turns.
>
> Ian Peter
>
> On 14/05/09 3:39 PM, "Jeremy Malcolm" <jeremy at ciroap.org> wrote:
>
>   
>> For those who didn't follow the open consultation meeting yesterday,
>> China became the first to openly oppose the continuation of the IGF:
>>
>> "Firstly, we very much appreciate the secretariat for their excellent
>> work.  We agree in principle with what has been said by previous
>> speakers on the specific aims of the IGF.  We feel that the IGF has
>> contributed a great deal in light of its historic mandate ...
>> establishing dialogue, exchanging points of view.  But this is not
>> enough to solve the problems.  The real problem is that in the field
>> of the Internet, there is a monopoly that exists.  And we need to
>> solve that problem. It's not by talking about principles merely that
>> we can solve this problem.
>>
>> But it's not enough for developing countries who don't have enough
>> resources and don't have the capacities to participate in this kind of
>> dialogue without further commitments being made, which is why the
>> points of view of developing countries, especially when it comes to
>> Internet governance, their points of view are not sufficiently
>> reflected in our discussions, which is why we don't agree that the IGF
>> should continue its mandate after the five years are up.
>>
>> So we repeat that the delegation of China does not agree with
>> extending the mission of the IGF beyond the five years.  We feel that
>> after the five years are up, we would need to look at the results that
>> have been achieved.  And we need, then, to launch into an
>> intergovernmental discussion."
>>
>> I have blogged about this today (comments welcome, there or here):
>>
>> http://igfwatch.org/discussion-board/china-seeks-to-end-the-igf
>>     
>
>
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