A cyber-dissident is a professional journalist, an activist or
citizen journalist
Citizen journalism, also known as collaborative media, participatory journalism, democratic journalism, guerrilla journalism or street journalism, is based upon public citizens "playing an active role in the process of collecting, reporting, a ...
who posts news, information, or commentary on the
internet
The Internet (or internet) is the global system of interconnected computer networks that uses the Internet protocol suite (TCP/IP) to communicate between networks and devices. It is a '' network of networks'' that consists of private, pub ...
that implies criticism of a
government
A government is the system or group of people governing an organized community, generally a state.
In the case of its broad associative definition, government normally consists of legislature, executive, and judiciary. Government is a ...
or
regime
In politics, a regime (also "régime") is the form of government or the set of rules, cultural or social norms, etc. that regulate the operation of a government or institution and its interactions with society. According to Yale professor Juan Jo ...
.
The practice of cyber-dissidence may have been inaugurated by Dr. Daniel Mengara, a
Gabon
Gabon (; ; snq, Ngabu), officially the Gabonese Republic (french: République gabonaise), is a country on the west coast of Central Africa. Located on the equator, it is bordered by Equatorial Guinea to the northwest, Cameroon to the north ...
ese scholar and activist living in political exile in
New Jersey
New Jersey is a state in the Mid-Atlantic and Northeastern regions of the United States. It is bordered on the north and east by the state of New York; on the east, southeast, and south by the Atlantic Ocean; on the west by the Delaware ...
in the United States. In 1998, he created a website in French whose name ''Bongo Doit Partir'' (Bongo Must Go) was clearly indicative of its purpose: it encouraged a revolution against the then 29-year-old regime of
Omar Bongo
El Hadj Omar Bongo Ondimba (born Albert-Bernard Bongo; 30 December 1935 – 8 June 2009) was a Gabonese politician who was the second President of Gabon for 42 years, from 1967 until his death in 2009. Omar Bongo was promoted to key positions as ...
in Gabon. The original URL,
http://www.globalwebco.net/bdp/, began to redirect to
http://www.bdpgabon.org in the year 2000. Inaugurating what was to become common current-day practice in the politically involved
blogosphere
The blogosphere is made up of all blogs and their interconnections. The term implies that blogs exist together as a connected community (or as a collection of connected communities) or as a social networking service in which everyday authors can p ...
, this movement's attempt at rallying the Gabonese around revolutionary ideals and actions has ultimately been vindicated by the 2011
Tunisia
)
, image_map = Tunisia location (orthographic projection).svg
, map_caption = Location of Tunisia in northern Africa
, image_map2 =
, capital = Tunis
, largest_city = capital
, ...
n and
Egypt
Egypt ( ar, مصر , ), officially the Arab Republic of Egypt, is a transcontinental country spanning the northeast corner of Africa and southwest corner of Asia via a land bridge formed by the Sinai Peninsula. It is bordered by the Mediter ...
ian revolutions, where the Internet has proved to be an effective tool for instigating successful critique, opposition and revolution against dictators.
At least two
nonprofit organizations
A nonprofit organization (NPO) or non-profit organisation, also known as a non-business entity, not-for-profit organization, or nonprofit institution, is a legal entity organized and operated for a collective, public or social benefit, in co ...
are currently working to raise awareness of the contributions of cyber-dissidents and to defend them against the
human rights
Human rights are Morality, moral principles or Social norm, normsJames Nickel, with assistance from Thomas Pogge, M.B.E. Smith, and Leif Wenar, 13 December 2013, Stanford Encyclopedia of PhilosophyHuman Rights Retrieved 14 August 2014 for ce ...
violations to which some of them are subjected:
Global Voices Online
Global Voices is an international community of writers, bloggers and digital activists that aim to translate and report on what is being said in citizen media worldwide. It is a non-profit project started at the Berkman Center for Internet and S ...
and
Reporters Without Borders
Reporters Without Borders (RWB; french: Reporters sans frontières; RSF) is an international non-profit and non-governmental organization with the stated aim of safeguarding the right to freedom of information. It describes its advocacy as found ...
. The latter has released a ''Handbook For Bloggers and Cyber-Dissidents'' and maintains a roster of currently imprisoned cyber-dissidents. The committee to Protect Bloggers has been created.
In regions where
print and
broadcast
Broadcasting is the distribution of audio or video content to a dispersed audience via any electronic mass communications medium, but typically one using the electromagnetic spectrum ( radio waves), in a one-to-many model. Broadcasting began ...
media are tightly controlled,
anonymous online postings by cyber-dissidents may be the only source of information about the experiences, feelings, and opinions of ordinary citizens. This advantage may be offset by the difficulty in assessing the
good faith
In human interactions, good faith ( la, bona fides) is a sincere intention to be fair, open, and honest, regardless of the outcome of the interaction. Some Latin phrases have lost their literal meaning over centuries, but that is not the case ...
and accuracy of reports originating from anonymous sources.
Recently, social-media tools have been widely credited with igniting pervasive social upheavals, some of which have even brought down governments.
Persecution
Gabon
In July 2003,
Amnesty International
Amnesty International (also referred to as Amnesty or AI) is an international non-governmental organization focused on human rights, with its headquarters in the United Kingdom. The organization says it has more than ten million members and sup ...
reported the arrest of five Gabonese known to be members of the cyber-dissident group ''Bongo Doit Partir''. The five members were detained for three months (See: Gabon: Prisoners of Conscience, and Gabon: Further information on Prisoners of conscience.)
China
In 2003,
Cai Lujun
Cai Lujun (; born 16 July 1968) is a Chinese dissident writer.
Biography
Cai Lujun was born in Feixiang County, Hebei Province. He was an owner of a foreign trading company and a freelance writer. He graduated from secondary school.
Cai was o ...
was imprisoned for posting a series of articles online under the pen name "盼民主"("expecting for democracy") criticizing the Chinese government.
Egypt
In 2006, several
blog
A blog (a truncation of "weblog") is a discussion or informational website published on the World Wide Web consisting of discrete, often informal diary-style text entries (posts). Posts are typically displayed in reverse chronological order ...
gers in Egypt were arrested for allegedly defaming the president
Hosni Mubarak
Muhammad Hosni El Sayed Mubarak, (; 4 May 1928 – 25 February 2020) was an Egyptian politician and military officer who served as the fourth president of Egypt from 1981 to 2011.
Before he entered politics, Mubarak was a career officer in t ...
and expressing critical views about Islam
Iran
In 2005, Mohamad Reza Nasab Abdolahi was imprisoned for publishing an open letter to
Ayatollah Ali Khamenei
Sayyid Ali Hosseini Khamenei ( fa, سید علی حسینی خامنهای, ; born 19 April 1939) is a Twelver Shia '' marja and the second and current Supreme Leader of Iran, in office since 1989. He was previously the third president ...
; Mohamad's pregnant wife and other bloggers who commented on Mohamad's treatment were also imprisoned.
Palestine
In October 2019, a
Palestinian
Palestinians ( ar, الفلسطينيون, ; he, פָלַסְטִינִים, ) or Palestinian people ( ar, الشعب الفلسطيني, label=none, ), also referred to as Palestinian Arabs ( ar, الفلسطينيين العرب, label=non ...
court blocked access to 59 websites that were identified as critical of the Palestinian Authority. According to the ruling, these websites published material that "threaten national security and civil peace".
Russia
When Russian president
Vladimir Putin
Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin; (born 7 October 1952) is a Russian politician and former intelligence officer who holds the office of president of Russia. Putin has served continuously as president or prime minister since 1999: as prime min ...
in 2006 called on his nation's women to have more children, journalist Vladimir Rakhmankov published a satiric article on the Internet calling Putin "''the nation's
phallic symbol
A phallus is a penis (especially when erect), an object that resembles a penis, or a mimetic image of an erect penis. In art history a figure with an erect penis is described as ithyphallic.
Any object that symbolically—or, more precisely ...
''". Rakhmankov was found guilty of offending Vladimir Putin, and fined by the court of the region he lived in to the sum equal of US$680. The overall story served as a good adversiting for Rakhmanov's article, that was republished by numerous Russian sources afterwards.
Three Russian bloggers has supposed in 2003, that Russian state security service
FSB, the main successor to the
KGB
The KGB (russian: links=no, lit=Committee for State Security, Комитет государственной безопасности (КГБ), a=ru-KGB.ogg, p=kəmʲɪˈtʲet ɡəsʊˈdarstvʲɪn(ː)əj bʲɪzɐˈpasnəsʲtʲɪ, Komitet gosud ...
, created special teams of people who appear on various blogs to
harass
Harassment covers a wide range of behaviors of offensive nature. It is commonly understood as behavior that demeans, humiliates or embarrasses a person, and it is characteristically identified by its unlikelihood in terms of social and moral ...
and
intimidate
Intimidation is to "make timid or make fearful"; or to induce fear. This includes intentional behaviors of forcing another person to experience general discomfort such as humiliation, embarrassment, inferiority, limited freedom, etc and the victi ...
political blog
A blog (a truncation of "weblog") is a discussion or informational website published on the World Wide Web consisting of discrete, often informal diary-style text entries (posts). Posts are typically displayed in reverse chronological order ...
gers and thus effectively prevent free discussion of undesirable subjects. They referred to such tactics are known as "
active measures
Active measures (russian: активные мероприятия, translit=aktivnye meropriyatiya) is political warfare conducted by the Soviet or Russian government since the 1920s. It includes offensive programs such as espionage, propaganda ...
". A Russian critic of this theory has noted, in 2003, that security services have more important tasks than flooding in forums.
Vietnam
The
Digital Freedom Network has pointed out cases of imprisoning cyber-dissidents in Vietnam, such as the 2004 case of
Pham Que Dong, a former
People's Army colonel, military
historian
A historian is a person who studies and writes about the past and is regarded as an authority on it. Historians are concerned with the continuous, methodical narrative and research of past events as relating to the human race; as well as the stu ...
who had quit the Communist Party in 1999. For publicly discussing issues related to corruption in the official structures and encouraging democratic reforms, he was charged with "abuse of democratic freedoms" and imprisoned.
Vietnam's Human Rights Situation by Alicia Burns
See also
*Censorship
Censorship is the suppression of speech, public communication, or other information. This may be done on the basis that such material is considered objectionable, harmful, sensitive, or "inconvenient". Censorship can be conducted by governments ...
/ Internet censorship
Internet censorship is the legal control or suppression of what can be accessed, published, or viewed on the Internet. Censorship is most often applied to specific internet domains (such as Wikipedia.org) but exceptionally may extend to all Inte ...
*Citizen journalism
Citizen journalism, also known as collaborative media, participatory journalism, democratic journalism, guerrilla journalism or street journalism, is based upon public citizens "playing an active role in the process of collecting, reporting, a ...
*Committee for the Defense of Legitimate Rights The Committee for the Defense of Legitimate Rights (CDLR; Arabic: لجنة الدفاع عن الحقوق الشرعية) was a Saudi dissident group created in 1993 which opposed the Saudi government as un-Islamic.
The CDLR was the first oppositi ...
*Freedom of speech
Freedom of speech is a principle that supports the freedom of an individual or a community to articulate their opinions and ideas without fear of retaliation, censorship, or legal sanction. The right to freedom of expression has been recogni ...
* IFEX
*Internet activism
Internet activism is the use of electronic communication technologies such as social media, e-mail, and podcasts for various forms of activism to enable faster and more effective communication by citizen movements, the delivery of particular infor ...
*Reporters Without Borders
Reporters Without Borders (RWB; french: Reporters sans frontières; RSF) is an international non-profit and non-governmental organization with the stated aim of safeguarding the right to freedom of information. It describes its advocacy as found ...
*Sociology of the Internet
The sociology of the Internet involves the application of sociological theory and method to the Internet as a source of information and communication. The overlapping field of digital sociology focuses on understanding the use of digital media ...
*Universal Declaration of Human Rights
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) is an international document adopted by the United Nations General Assembly that enshrines the Human rights, rights and freedoms of all human beings. Drafted by a UN Drafting of the Universal De ...
References
Further reading
*
External links
*
Global Voices Online
Committee to Protect Bloggers
Human Rights Watch: Free Expression and the Internet
Gabon: Prisoners of Conscience
Bongo Doit Partir
*Wilson, J. G. (2014). Sartre and Cyber-Dissidence: The Groupe en Fusion and the Putative We-Subject. ''Sartre Studies International'', ''20''(1), 17.
{{Citizen journalism
Technology in society
Internet-based activism