Governmental over-regulation and content censorship are common in Central Asian countries and pose a serious danger to new media in the emerging internet scene, according to OSCE Representative on Freedom of the Media, Miklos Haraszti. Speaking after the Third Amsterdam Internet Conference, organized by his office from 17 to 18 June, he said: “Online information is the most important source of pluralistic information in the countries of Central Asia. Any over-regulation, filtering or censorship by governments is unacceptable. Citizens should have the right to decide what they wish to access and view on the Internet.”
The conference brought together leading international experts on human rights and the Internet from Western and Eastern Europe, the Caucasus, Central Asia and North America. The OSCE Representative on Freedom of the Media and the Paris-based NGO Reporters sans frontieres issued a joint declaration on guaranteeing media freedom on the Internet. It lists six main principles for protecting online media freedom and stresses that in a democratic and open society citizens should decide what they wish to access and view on the Internet. Any filtering or rating of online content by governments is unacceptable and websites should not be required to register with governmental authorities, the declaration states.
Freedom of the Internet will be the focus of a media conference in the South Caucasus and in Central Asia later this autumn.