With less than six months until it takes over the chairmanship of one of Europe’s flagship human rights organizations, Kazakhstan has thumbed its nose to Western governments and introduced a draconian internet law. Full Story »
Posted by Dan Kennedy - via GlobalPost
The domino theory may apply here. There is a buzz on the internet as one nation asfter another imposes more limits on free speach.
The internet should be subject to regulation,” Kazakhstan’s Agency for Information and Communications Chairman, Kuanyshbek Yesekeev, was quoted as saying in the local press. “If it is allowed to drift, then we will repeat the historical experience of Moldova, where because of the internet people went out onto the streets to strike
For many, the fact that Nazarbayev signed the legislation just days after a visit by U.S. Undersecretary of State William Burns sent a pointed message to the West that Kazakhstan would not undertake any major political reforms.
It is not lost on most goverments that the fall of the USSR was in large part to the information age where the old propoganda was largely debunked, Witness North Korea today,