Talking to people in censored countries
OK, Mark threw this down this morning as a challenge, and it, well, is a bit challenging. I really wish that China would be on the list because Frank Dai, who we've spoken to before has been online most of the day. I'm glad for the people of China that they're not that censored, but it would have made my job easier.
Here's a little window on how I'm trying to reach people. It's a bit high-tech, but then again, I don't exactly have a telephone book handy for Turkmenistan. But, if you're reading this in one of the 10 most censored countries, drop me an e-mail.
I started looking through the directory on Skype. Skype is a global internet telephone service, and you can search for people by location and what language they speak.
I found a few Skype users in Eritrea and three or four in Myanmar, but I didn't find anyone who was actually online.
I then turned to people who I knew or we had spoken to. I sent off an e-mail to Nathan, who writes the blog Registan.
Next, I contacted Nart who works at ICE, the Internet Censorship Explorer. Here is what Nart does at ICE:
ICE also contains bleeding edge Internet filtering and censorship research related to the work of the Citizen Lab and the OpenNet Initiative including the development of censorship circumvention technology.
He's going to shoot me some e-mail addresses, so maybe we can track down some people in these countries. He said that I should contact the folks behind this Burmese news sites.
But then I remembered some well known Syrian blogs. I should have started there for this challenge.
And in the meantime, I found a Libyan blog, From the Rock. She has just posted that she wants to start a meetup with other Libyan bloggers. Checked out her profile, and she had this link to a Libyan group blog.
Found a blogger with an instant messenger account. Added him to my contacts, but drat, he's not online.
To be honest, I never really tried to contact anyone in North Korea. I've done a little reporting on North Korea. Most of the information comes from interviews with defectors. To communicate, North Koreans smuggle mobile phones into the country and stand on hills next to the border.
The CPJ report sums up the control on information this way:
In North Korea, all “news” is positive. According to the country’s rigidly controlled media, North Korea has never suffered famine or poverty, and citizens would willingly sacrifice themselves for their leader. The official Korean Central News Agency said that leader Kim Jong Il is so beloved that after a deadly munitions train explosion in a populated area, people ran into buildings to save the ubiquitous portraits of the “Dear Leader” before they rescued their own family members.
We're already on the air, and I've just got a message back from Val, who writes for a group blog about Cuba. She has placed a call to a friend in Havana. It's a race against time now.
But we've put out a plea on air. I wonder if anyone in those ten countries can hear us.
We just got this text message from Jay Hoge Riga in Latvia:
You spoke of Belarus as being a country where BBC was censored. I visited Minsk in January and BBC TV was on the local cable system.
Maybe there is a chance that the signal is getting through.
