Site shows censored data from around the globe
Their stories, banned in their own countries, are now being heard across the world by visitors to a Web site unveiled Tuesday by a privately funded human rights watchdog group called Digital Freedom Network.
The DFN site offers a collection of censored material from 17 countries, including letters from jailed dissidents, newspaper articles, poems and other fictional works, and editorial cartoons. The site also offers first-hand accounts of human rights violations occurring in nations such as China, Algeria, Turkey and Kenya.
Letter from prison
The newspaper editor in Cameroon, Pius Njawe, writes in a February 1998 letter posted on the site of the obstacles he must overcome to communicate with the outside world:
"While I may receive newspapers and books, I don't have the right to write. The prison director called me into his office to forbid it. I now write in secret. I must get up at 3 a.m. to write by flashlight, and I must pay off my neighbors not to turn me in. This is how I am composing this letter for you. I will send it to my office secretly to be typed into a computer."
Njawe alleges in the letter that he has been denied medical treatment while in prison, and that his pregnant wife was beaten by prison authorities on several occasions when she came to visit him, resulting in a miscarriage.
If it wasn't for the Internet, communiques such as Njawe's might not ever reach the attention of human rights groups who might be able to act on his behalf, DFN officials said in a statement.
Free access to information
"The Digital Freedom Network fulfills the promise of the Internet by providing millions of people around the world with free access to information that had previously been difficult or impossible to find," DFN officials said. "By using the power of the Internet to circumvent restrictions on free speech, DFN applies pressure on authoritarian regimes that censor materials and violate human rights."
The DFN site is funded by a private grant from IDT Corp. CEO Howard Jonas and several other individual donors, officials said. DFN itself was founded by Jonas in 1994.