NEW YORK - With testimony from people who have paid the price for daring to utter their opinions, a new Web site was launched today that aims to undermine suppression of free expression by publishing censored and banned documents.
At a kickoff event here for the Digital Freedom Network, Koigi wa Wamwere declared that "in the struggle between dictatorship and democracy, there is nothing more powerful than an idea whose time has come.... The Digital Freedom Network [will] speak for the voiceless, protect the weak, and speak out the muzzled ideas of freedom, democracy, and justice."
The site's archive of suppressed materials ranges from a cartoon from the Algerian newspaper La Tribune that resulted in the jailing of the artist and the shutdown of the paper, to an article from Cameroon that caused the editor of the paper to be thrown into the brutal Douala Central Prison for suggesting that President Paul Biya has a heart problem.
Letters, articles, and satirical cartoons from Asia, Europe, the Americas, and the Middle East are represented, and the Digital Freedom Network is planning to obtain more suppressed materials from watchdog organizations such as Reporters sans Frontières, CubaNet, and the Index on Censorship.
The Digital Freedom Network is nonpartisan, and only works deemed pornographic or terrorist will be excluded from the archive, said executive director Bobson Wong. The site's policy is that "an individual's freedom of expression should be limited only when it endangers the rights or freedoms of others."
Chinese dissident Bao Ge, who was arrested and sent to a "re-education" camp in 1989 after protesting the Chinese government's crackdown on student protests in Tienanmen Square, said that he believes the Internet is already having "immeasurable impact" on political developments in China.
"By the year 2000, there will be 20 million computers in China," he said. "As long as China wants to get into the world market, it cannot disallow the spread of computers." Although there are no organizations founded specifically to fight online censorship there, Bao said, prominent scholars and scientists are exerting pressure on the government to keep the Net an open forum.
Although Web access is difficult to come by in Kenya, wa Wamwere said sites like the Digital Freedom Network are important because "the battle against dictatorship is being fought on two fronts" -- locally and globally. Wa Wamwere said he believes that apartheid in South Africa was finally overcome by pressure from the outside world.
"When you're a single individual being driven to court in a vehicle with 20 police vehicles, 100 soldiers, and police dogs around you," wa Wamwere said, "you realize how powerful ideas are, and how they can be very much feared."
The Digital Freedom Network is being funded by a "bottomless grant" from Howard Jonas, chief executive of the IDT Corp., an international telecommunications firm. One of his motivations for launching the Digital Freedom Network was frustration with the "territoriality" of already existing human rights organizations, Jonas says.
Jonas, who has already spent US$1 million out of his own pocket on the project, said he had offered free Internet access and Web hosting to dozens of organizations in the past only to have his offers turned down because the groups didn't want to jeopardize public grant sources.
"It became clear to me that this was not a community of idealists. This was their income, this was their territory, and they wanted to protect it," he said.
Jonas added that he feels "ashamed" that IDT "can't back this as a company.
"Were we to back this, a lot of these regimes would not do business with us, and that would affect us very adversely. I'm ashamed as an American that our businesses are in this kind of position," he said.
Jonas insisted, however, that even if one of the regimes that his company does business with -- such as China -- were to demand the removal of material from the Digital Freedom Network, he would tell officials that he doesn't have the editorial power to censor the site.
Executive Director Wong said he understands that some repressive governments will choose to block access to the Digital Freedom Network altogether.
"We will be joining the company of The New York Times, Business Week, and the Dalai Lama," Wong said. "That's good company."
