Global Social Media: Eritrea
Many may not heard about Eritrea before and so do I. Therefore following my curiosity, I am about to find out more of Eritrea as in the location, the internet access and the people. Eritrea is located in the north east of Africa on the Red Sea surrounded by neighbour countries like Djibouti, Sudan, Ethiopia with the population of over 5 million. The country is listed as the most isolated place on earth in term of internet connections, in other word ‘The Africa’s North Korea’. The internet access in this country is fully controlled by its government and it is the only African country to have no privately-owned media (BBC News 2019). The internet censorship and surveillance has got to another level here in Eritrea. It is also voted as the tops list of most censored countries in the world overtaking China, North Korea and any others (VOA News 2019). According to a list compiled by the Committee to Protect Journalists (n.d.), the following are the ranking of top 10 most censorship countries:
In Eritrea, internet access is all government-controlled and less than 1% of the population reportedly go online. All non-government controlled media is banned. There is no room for freely reported news and the media are subject to the whim of the president. According BBC News (2019), the government has held a monopoly over broadcasting since independence as well as shutting down all independent media since 2001. Its exceptionally limited internet access has caused unconvience to its people as well as there are no connection between the citizens and outside world. Do the government actually cares about their citizens feelings in term of freedom? The answer could be no because citizens could not have knew their news are being censored. Citizens might still lived under the rock where they know nothing about internet, digital media, and so on. Are the government being selfish or they are hiding somethings fishy? It remains a unanswered question.
Why do some countries censor the internet?
In this 21st century, where digital media is almost everything in our daily life, current technological movement gives the impression that the internet is unrestrained but imagine people or the whole country’s media is totally censored by its government. Well, there are countries like that, citizens has no access to internet, to social media, to the world. The common reasons behind are always related to politics to completely controlling what information citizens have access to. But unlike any countries, Eritrea has the strictest law on censoring the country’s internet which allows governments to be able to hold greater over what people say and do, and often, how they vote (Open Access Government 2019). Access to information throughout the country is also hurt by a prohibition against mobile Wi-Fi, and means Eritreans are only able to access the internet via slow dial-up modems, which could account for the very low access rate of just 1%.
Not only that, North Korea with the dictatorship of its supreme leader Kim is known to have a extremely strict censorship rules over its country. With the government able to take strict control over communications, all media outlets are owned and controlled by the North Korean government. As such, all media in North Korea get their news through the only government oriented platform; Korean Central News Agency. All news, information publish by any North Korean media has to go through and get its information from Korean Central News Agency. It is believe that the reasons are mostly because of its propaganda as back in the days to prevent conflicts with countries like China, Russia and South Korea (Veronica 2016, vol.37, pp.46-50). In addition, it also helps to prevent any distribution of digital media files hence it also prevent the loss of control in term of digital media distribution and also easier for tracking (Schiess 2017, pp.4).
People Republic of China, one of the biggest censors of the internet and uses a vast digital barrier nicknamed “The Great Firewall of China” has implemented the similar concepts across its country as well and significantly stepped up its game starting from 2012 when President Xi took place. The government censors content for mainly political reasons, but also to maintain its control over the populace. The government maintains censorship over all media capable of reaching a wide audience. This includes television, print media, radio, film, theatre, text messaging, instant messaging, video games, literature and the internet. However unlike others countries, China has also developed its own national social media or internet platform to benefit its citizen which are mainly allowed to use only in China. Social media apps such as WeChat, Sina Weibo, Tencent QQ, DouYin and many more.
Do citizens have a choice on censorship? Does this means they have no rights to oppose?
Censorship appears in most countries whether it is seriously carried out or not. Even country like Malaysia has its own censorship on internet websites as well. Malaysia ban most of the pornography websites which prevent citizens to gain any access to any of those websites which could potentially harm the younger generations or any individuals. Back to Eritrea, personally from my point of view, people living there do not get a choice to decide in fact they have to follow whatever their government said to stay tight with their legal rules and regulations. They are put in a situation whereby they can only listen to orders from the government and do not get freedom from there.
Well, there are exceptional cases where citizens tries to disobey the rules set by Eritrea’s government on censorship media. As of 2018, at least 16 journalists were still behind bars or imprisoned in Eritrea. I believed with the advancement of technologies available these days, it could be getting easier for people to break the wall, oppose the law and reach for the outside world. Virtual Private Network (VPN) is one of the ways for any individuals to use and have access to the internet browsers.
BBC News 2019, ‘Eritrea profile - Media’, viewed 6 June 2020 <https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-13349077>.
VOA News 2019, ‘Eritrea Tops List of Most Censored Countries’, viewed 6 June 2020, <https://www.voanews.com/africa/eritrea-tops-list-most-censored-countries>.
Committee to Protect Journalists (n.d.), ‘10 Most Censored Countries’, viewed 6 June 2020, <https://cpj.org/reports/2019/09/10-most-censored-eritrea-north-korea-turkmenistan-journalist/>.
Open Access Government (2019), ‘Why do some countries censor the internet?’, viewed 7 June 2020, <https://www.openaccessgovernment.org/countries-censor-the-internet/58366/>.
Veronica, M 2016, ‘Propaganda and Censorship: Adapting to the Modern Age’, ProQuest, vol.37, pp.46-50, viewed 7 June 2020, <https://search.proquest.com/openview/69209b239e82cd368d45cc68d1c62c09/1?pq-origsite=gscholar&cbl=32013>.
Schless, N 2017, Governmental Control of Digital Media Distribution in North Korea: Surveillance and Censorship on Modern Consumer Devices, ERNW GmbH, pp.4, viewed 7 June 2020, <https://mirror.adversec.com/dprk/docs/governmental_control_of_digital_media_distribution_in_north_korea-nschiess.pdf>.
