STATEMENT: R2K demands the government’s internet agreement with China be made public!
The Right2Know Campaign notes with grave concern South Africa’s recent signing of a joint “plan of action” on information and communication technology (ICT) with China. R2K demands that the co-operation agreement immediately be made public.
On the 8th of June, minister of telecommunications and postal services signed the co-operation agreement with China’s minister of industry and information technology Miao Wei. The agreement covers a range of ICT issues but, most worryingly, also seeks co-operation on internet governance and cyber security.
China is one of the most repressive countries in the world for internet users. The country’s highly restrictive and often arbitrary internet regulations are overseen by several powerful and highly authoritarian bureaucracies, including the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, and are governed by an overriding concern with political stability and state security at the expense of internet freedom.
Censorship is the norm in China, where websites, including major news outlets and social media platforms like Facebook, are routinely blocked. The role of censoring content is often forced onto internet service providers and content providers, who comply for fear of falling foul of the state authorities.
The Chinese regime makes use of highly sophisticated surveillance systems as well as an army of online informers to crack down on political dissent. Ill-defined terms such as “jeopardizing the integrity of the nation’s unity” and “disrupting the solidarity of peoples” have been used to impose extremely harsh prison terms on online critics, making China “the world’s biggest prison for netizens,” according to a 2012 report by Reporters Without Borders.
Meanwhile the so-called Great Firewall of China – regulations and internet infrastructure designed to severely restrict the flow of information between the global internet and the internet in China – keeps Chinese internet users locked out from global conversations, thereby undermining the most valuable democratic aspects of a truly global medium.
It is extremely worrying that South Africa’s government is co-operating with China on internet-related matters. Our government has already given its citizens reason to be seriously concerned about internet freedom after the Film and Publications Board recently gazetted a draconian set of draft regulations for online content, large parts of which read as if they were lifted straight from a Chinese government textbook.
One would assume that the public outcry over the draft regulations would give the government pause when entering into internet co-operation agreements with regimes that are notoriously hostile to a free and open internet. The Chinese government’s jailing of internet activists, its wholly unjustifiable censorship regime and its systematic and extremely invasive surveillance apparatus are anathema to freedom of expression, freedom of association, and the right to freely receive and impart information – fundamental human right that are enshrined in our constitution.
R2K is seriously concerned that, in partnering with China on issues of internet governance and cyber-security, our own government’s aim is to learn the trade of internet censorship from their counterparts. R2K demands that the co-operation agreement immediately be made public.
