The Great Firewall of China

It's hard to imagine a world where one cannot express thoughts and opinions, feel free to talk about politics, social problems or even find information on incidents that shaped the history of the nation. This is the suffocating reality for millions of denizens in the world whose basic right to freedom of speech and expression has been wrenched out of their hands for reasons varying from religious fanatism, extreme notions of governance or just vested interests.

French Human rights organization, Reporters without Borders has enlisted not less than thirteen countries, who have been identified as 'Enemies of the Internet' for their oppressive laws governing the Internet. Among the thirteen are Belarus, Burma, Cuba, Egypt, North Korea, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Tunisia, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan and Vietnam, while China and Iran are found to be the most notorious of the lot.

Iran has recently been in news for banning Google-owned video sharing website, YouTube, after an objectionable video clip of an Iranian actress was posted on the site. The government has blacklisted more than 15,000 websites, calling them 'non-Islamic' while it has made it mandatory to every Internet Service Provider to adhere to both, the Telecommunication Company of Iran and the Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance. Iranian president, Mahmoud Ahmainejad's government is now considered to be one of the most repressive Internet censorship regimes in the world.

Meanwhile, Chinese censorship has escalated to such an extent that the country's oppressive stance on the Internet has prompted it to be called the 'Great Firewall of China'.

The Chinese government has mobilized a force of close to 3000 officers to keep a close watch on internet forums, sites, bulletin boards, blogs or vlogs and major portals to check for 'objectionable' content and erase material within minutes of being published. The 'Golden Shield Project', which is the formal name for the 'Great firewall of China' is owned by the Ministry of Public Security of the People’s Republic of China which began functioning in November 2003. The project is designed to block content by preventing IP addresses from being routed through and consists of standard firewall and proxy servers at internet gateways.

With reference to China, censored material include websites belonging to outlawed groups such as Falun Gong, news sites which cover topics such as police brutality, the Tiananmen square student protest and the following massacre by the Chinese police, articles and information on the Dalai Lama, freedom of speech and expression, Marxist websites, Wikipedia entries and other information on Taiwanese independence. Some of the websites blocked or censored in China are Voice of America, BBC News and Yahoo! Hong Kong. (The administration regions of Hong Kong and Macau have their own legal systems, so Chinese censorship does not apply there.)

Some common methods used for censoring content online include IP address blocking, DNS filtering and redirection, URL filtering, Packet filtering and resetting internet connections in the country.

News and articles on the Tiananmen Square massacre of 1989, which give an account of the political turmoil between the government of the People's Republic of China, and students, intellectuals and labor activists, are blocked or censored in the country. China could accomplish this with the help of IT giants like Google, whose Chinese version of the search engine drastically alters info and pictures of the incident, giving Chinese citizens, a skewed and incorrect version of historical facts. The political unrest had followed a period of corruption and repression which led to inflation and widespread unemployment in the country. In the subsequent clash, estimates of civilian deaths vary from 23 (as submitted by the Communist Party of China) to 400–800 (as submitted by Central Intelligence Agency), 2600 (according to the Chinese Red Cross). Injuries are generally held to have numbered from 7,000 to 10,000.

However, China is making sure not to let any of its citizens know what exactly happened there, why and how the student community was massacred.