By Trisha Roy
According to recent studies, Southeast Asia is facing an alarming problem in the absence of internet freedom for the voice of the common people. Researchers have found 65 countries which represent 87% of internet users globally, about half of them experienced a decline of internet freedom. China, Syria and Ethiopia are the least free, whereas Estonia, Iceland and Canada enjoy the opinion-friendly internet.
This problem, according to researchers is most visible in the Southeast Asian region as it has been going through a remarkable evolution. The economic growth, rising democracy in the region, free and fair elections, anti-corruption rallies and improvement of social rights of the garment workers of Cambodia were driven with the help of the internet.
Southeast Asian cyberspace
On 12 April 2017, Thailands Ministry of Digital Economy and Society issued what the Bangkok Post called a strange government directive. It prohibited anyone from following, communicating with, or disseminating information online from three outspoken critics of the governmentor risk up to 15 years in prison. The statement seemingly appeared out of nowhere without any explanation. This deadly dose of opaque cyber regulations and an authoritarian political regime has made Thailands cyberspace one of the most restricted in Asia.
This combination, however, is growing more and more representative of the regional norm. In Southeast Asia, the liberating effects of the internet coexist in increasing tension with state anxiety about information control. Southeast Asian cyberspace is thus becoming more expansive, yet more restricted. On the one hand, the number of people who have come online for the first time has exploded: Myanmar, for example, went from 1% internet penetration in 2012 to 26% in 2017 thanks to an abundance of cheap mobile phones. Internet users across the region are increasingly spending time online to work, study, connect with friends and participate in civic and political life.
On the other hand, Southeast Asian governments are growing weary of the potential of the internet to threaten political stability. Cyberspace in Southeast Asia has evolved into a space for contestation over power and control between the state and its societal opponents, with the former exerting greater and more sophisticated control over the latter.
According to Freedom Houses most recent Freedom on the Net report, released at the end of 2017, the scores of seven of the eight Southeast Asian nations included in the survey fell. Now, only the Philippines remains ranked as mostly free due to limited censorship, but its score still declined due to a rise in the use of opinion shapers to push pro-government rhetoric, along with targeted attacks on journalists and activists, such as the murder of lawyer Mia Manuelita Mascarinas-Green in February. The biggest disappointment, in many ways, was Myanmar, which saw its rating fall even after the countrys first open election brought the National League for Democracy (NLD) and Aung San Suu Kyi to power. Fake news and, more recently, arrests of journalists is the culprit.
The Chinese role
Internet freedom in East Asia is exemplified by a key paradox even as access expands exponentially and social-media tools open new avenues for information sharing, freedom of expression and user privacy online are declining. Governments in the region are taking increasing measures to regulate not only the spread of internationally recognized harmful content, but also citizen communications on topics of vital social, political, religious, and security relevance. Leading the regions most robust campaign is the ruling Communist Party of China.
The Chinese authorities have made clear that they are willing to imprison ordinary citizens based on content shared or viewed via social media. A February 2017 Freedom House study on religious freedom found that Falun Gong practitioners had been jailed for posting messages about the spiritual group or human rights abuses to WeChat or QQ and that young Uyghurs had been imprisoned for viewing online videos about Islam.
Yang Peidong, a postdoctoral fellow at Nanyang Technological University, in Singapore, said that the governing of the online discursive space during Xis era involved not only censorship but also the mobilisation of more constructive and proactive tactics, such as guiding public opinion under the catchphrase positive energy. China has been working hard to strengthen its vision of the internet as space, like physical territory, that should be divided up along national lines and governed how each country sees fit. However, human rights groups say that Beijing is using the forum to influence global internet governance in ways that would curb freedom of expression and exacerbate rights abuses.
Ramifications of having a more open internet
The Internet is the decisive technology of the Information Age, and with the explosion of wireless communication in the early twenty-first century, we can say that humankind is now almost entirely connected, albeit with great levels of inequality in bandwidth, efficiency, and price.
Globally, time spent on social networking sites surpassed time spent on e-mail in November 2007, and the number of social networking users surpassed the number of e-mail users in July 2009. Today, social networking sites are the preferred platforms for all kinds of activities, both business and personal, and sociability has dramatically increased, but it is a different kind of sociability. Most Facebook users visit the site daily, and they connect on multiple dimensions, but only on the ones they choose. Virtual life is becoming more social than the physical life, but it is less a virtual reality than a real virtuality, facilitating real-life work and urban living.
A red flag
Access to an open and free internet is a farfetched dream to many. The expression of opinions and ideas is considered to be most influential when expressed over the internet by todays world. A platform to paint ones ideas in front of the whole human community not only spreads knowledge but can also be used as a means to gather support from the like-minded people. A free internet can be utilised for a noble cause but may also be used for enticing negative feelings among the people. The dividing line between what is right and wrong over the internet is bleak, to say the least.
Thus, a governments decision about what to be made accessible and what needs to be curtailed is a debatable issue even now. However, the internet censorship that the Southeast Asian region faces is indeed a red flag. A democracy cannot work by shutting up its own people from expressing their own feelings. Its an infringement of the basic ideas of democracy; weakening of the societal structure.
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