World Summit on the Information Society

Censorship report censored

Tests conducted between 2:30 and 4:30 p.m. using the Internet service provider 3S Global Net found that the French and Arabic press releases for Human Rights Watch’s latest report on Internet freedom in the Middle East were also BLOCKED in Tunis. Users trying to access these pages received a page disguised to look like a French-language Microsoft Internet Explorer error page that read “Impossible de trouver la page” (“Impossible to find the page”), regardless of the browser used or the language of the operating system used. The results were consistent with the blocking behavior exhibited in previous tests, documented in Human Rights Watch’s report, False Freedom: Online Censorship in the Middle East and North Africa.” The English, German, and Farsi-language versions of the press release, and the full report, in English, were available. Arabic and French are the languages most commonly read in Tunisia. The French and Arabic versions of Amnesty International's report on Tunisia were also apparently blocked in Tunis outside the WSIS compound. Amnesty International was also prevented from distributing its November 14 report on Tunisia at WSIS.