[governance] What happened?

[Ian Peter]

Ive written to the Secretariat on behalf of IGC requesting further
information, but this appears to be a tit-for-tat incident because the IGF
Secretariat refused the Chinese request before the meeting to ban the
workshop altogether. But just to reiterate under this heading -

I have been trying to find out exactly what happened here and a lot of the
media reports are wildly inaccurate. What people who were there believe to
be the case is roughly as follows.

The Chinese Government did complain about a poster in a public area. If it
had been inside the door instead of outside the door, there would have been
no issue that the security police apparently felt compelled to act on.

The workshop went ahead as planned after the dispute about the poster.

One person who was fortunately present during the whole event was (I may
have the title wrong here) was the UN Under Secretary for Freedom of
Expression. He has requested a full report on the incident from the IGF
Secretariat.

It is not clear who exactly the Chinese complaint was to. It was not to the
host country, the Chinese know that¹s not the appropriate way to do things.
It would appear that the complaint may have been direct to the UN Security
Unit who have travelled to all the IGFs and work closely with the
Secretariat. Whether the Secretariat proper had any strong role in the
decision is unknown to me and to those close to the event.

The other thing I have just learnt is that there was a Chinese objection to
the event taking place well before this incident and before IGF at all.  It
should not be surprising to anyone that the Chinese complained or that the
Secretariat properly ruled the workshop should go ahead. This then might be
an incident in response to that ruling ­ but I don¹t know.

However, as regards action ­ I am about to write to Markus Kummer on behalf
of the Caucus and express our concerns about the incident and ask if he can
give any further information about the restrictive action and its rationale.
That doesn¹t preclude any other action but I think we should seek more
information as to why the action was taken before going much further.
Hopefully they will respond quickly.

Ian Peter


On 16/11/09 8:05 PM, "Fouad Bajwa" <fouadbajwa at gmail.com> wrote:

> I am at the IGF and heard about this issue that during the ONI open
> network initiative (of the network of the Soros Foundation/Open
> Society Institute) workshop in the morning. The issue arose when the
> meeting was disrupted by UN officials who demanded removal of a poster
> that mentioned Internet firewalls in China.. Here is the post by the
> Pakistani Civil Society at the IGF:
> 
> IGF 2009 event rattled by UN Security Office
> "If we cannot discuss topics about Internet censorship and
> surveillance policy at a forum about Internet governance then what is
> the point of something like the IGF," said Ron Deibert, director of
> the Citizen Lab at the University of Toronto's Munk Centre for
> International Studies and one of ONI's principal investigators.
> By Rabia Garib
> 16 Nov 2009
> 
> KARACHI, 15 NOVEMBER 2009 - An anti-censorship group holding an event
> Sunday at the United Nations-sponsored Internet Governance Forum (IGF)
> in Sharm El Sheikh, Egypt, was disrupted by UN officials who demanded
> removal of a poster that mentioned Internet firewalls in China.
> 
> According to a Pakistani delegate, Shahzad Ahmed of Bytesforall.net, a
> reception hosted by Open Net Initiative (ONI) was rattled by IGF
> security, who objected to a poster advertising "Access Controlled", a
> book being introduced at the event. "The poster was thrown on the
> floor and we were told to remove it because of the reference to China
> and Tibet. We refused, and security guards came and removed it. The
> incident was witnessed by many," Ahmed reported.
> 
> The poster promoting ONI's forthcoming book, "Access Controlled" was
> removed by the IGF's organizers because a sentence in the poster
> apparently violated UN policy. The sentence in question reads, "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."
> 
> "If we cannot discuss topics about Internet censorship and
> surveillance policy at a forum about Internet governance then what is
> the point of something like the IGF," said Ron Deibert, director of
> the Citizen Lab at the University of Toronto's Munk Centre for
> International Studies and one of ONI's principal investigators.
> 
> Deibert, one of the organizers of the reception, said he will file a
> complaint against the censorship of the event and send it to the
> United Nations Human Rights Commission.
> 
> "We condemn this undemocratic act of censoring our event just because
> someone is trying to impress or be in the good graces of the Chinese
> government. It is ironic that while people are allowed to gather here
> to discuss freedom of expression online, censorship and surveillance
> practices on the Internet, we are being restricted in expressing our
> views," said Al Alegre of the Foundation for Media Alternatives, a
> member of the ONI Network.
> 
> On Mon, Nov 16, 2009 at 4:11 AM, Karl Auerbach <karl at cavebear.com> wrote:
>> 
>> News is just filtering out about the teardown of a book poster at the IGF
>> because it violated some UN rule about China.
>> 
>> We've seen videos of the teardown of the sign but there's not much news out
>> here about the why except that it was done by UN security because a sentence
>> violated some rule or another.
>> 
>> Anyone have more details?
>> 
>>                --karl--
>> 
>> ____________________________________________________________
>> You received this message as a subscriber on the list:
>>    governance at lists.cpsr.org
>> To be removed from the list, send any message to:
>>    governance-unsubscribe at lists.cpsr.org
>> 
>> For all list information and functions, see:
>>    http://lists.cpsr.org/lists/info/governance
>> 
> 
> 


____________________________________________________________
You received this message as a subscriber on the list:
     governance at lists.cpsr.org
To be removed from the list, send any message to:
     governance-unsubscribe at lists.cpsr.org

For all list information and functions, see:
     http://lists.cpsr.org/lists/info/governance