Myanmar and China have world’s ‘worst environment’ for internet freedom

Freedom connected the Net study says Kyrgyzstan showed sharpest downgrade, portion Iceland had ‘freest online environment’.

Global net state has declined for the 14th twelvemonth successful a row, with Myanmar and China tied for the world’s worst record, a caller survey says.

Freedom House, a pro-democracy probe radical based successful the United States, besides said successful its survey connected Wednesday that Kyrgyzstan showed the biggest driblet successful 2024 arsenic President Sadyr Japarov clamped down connected online organising and the authorities moved to soundlessness integer media.

The Kyrgyz authorities shuttered the investigative media website, Kloop, which had reported connected allegations by an absorption person of torture successful custody.

The Freedom connected the Net (FOTN) study said protections for quality rights online diminished successful 27 of the 72 countries it covered.

Myanmar became the archetypal state successful a decennary to lucifer China for a debased net state score, the study found. The subject authorities successful the Southeast Asian state has cracked down connected dissent, imposing systematic censorship and surveillance of online speech.

The study highlighted caller measures by the authorities successful May to artifact entree to virtual backstage networks (VPNs) to bypass net controls.

China’s debased people for net state is rooted successful its “great firewall“, which attempts to isolate the state from the remainder of the satellite and artifact contented that poses a menace to the ruling Communist Party.

Asked astir the report, China said its radical “enjoy assorted rights and freedoms successful accordance with the law”.

Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokeswoman Mao Ning said: “As for the alleged report, I deliberation it is wholly baseless and made with ulterior motives.”

Other countries that were downgraded see Azerbaijan – the big of adjacent month’s United Nations clime acme – for imprisoning radical implicit societal media posts, and Iraq, wherever a salient activistic was killed aft a Facebook station led to protests.

“In three-quarters of the countries covered by FOTN, net users faced apprehension for nonviolent expression, astatine times starring to draconian situation sentences exceeding 10 years,” Freedom House said.

Meanwhile, Iceland has maintained its presumption arsenic the “freest online environment” successful the world, followed by Estonia, Canada, Chile and Costa Rica.

Zambia had the largest people improvement, and the study recovered that the state saw a increasing abstraction for online activism.

For the archetypal clip successful 2024, FOTN assessed conditions successful Chile and the Netherlands, some of which it said showcased beardown safeguards for quality rights online.

Elections

For the US, the study highlighted a interest astir the deficiency of safeguards against authorities surveillance and placed it astatine 76 of 100 connected a standard of the extortion of quality rights online.

It specifically pointed to enactment by astatine slightest 19 US states against the usage of artificial quality successful predetermination campaigns.

With respective much elections, including the November 5 US statesmanlike election, scheduled for the past 3 months of the year, the study recovered that the net has been “reshaped” owed to the polls.

“Technical censorship curbed galore absorption parties’ quality to scope supporters and suppressed entree to autarkic reporting astir the electoral process,” the study said.

It added that “more than a cardinal voters had to marque large decisions astir their aboriginal portion navigating a censored, distorted, and unreliable accusation space”.

Source

:

Al Jazeera and quality agencies