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Date: Tuesday, April 1, 2008

International Olympic Committee Demand Open Internet Access

Vice-chairman of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) Richard Kevan Gosper has told China to provide open internet access during this summer’s Games in Beijing. Mr Kevan Gosper ordered the access at one of the IOC’s final meetings with the Olympic organisers before the games begin in August. He told the organisers that failing to provide open access to the internet during this time would “reflect very poorly” on the country.

Mr Kevan Gosper told Games organisers that they were obliged to offer full access to the internet under their Olympic contract. He also added that the 30,000 journalists expected to visit Beijing in order to cover the Olympics would need to have open access to the internet for their work. He said: “Our concern is that the press is able to operate as it has at previous Games during Games time.”

China is infamous for imposing strict state control, particularly on the internet. The country routinely blocks access to a number of internet sites and also implements a blacklist of words that simply cannot be found online. In fact, anybody trying to enter one of these banned words into a search engine will find that it crashes.

China has recently seen much unrest relating to Tibet, including riots that resulted on the death of 18 people. Unfortunately, this controversy caused the country to enforce even stricter web regulations than usual. However, Mr Kevan Gosper has been assured that this will not be the case during the Olympics. He said: “There was some criticism that the internet closed down during events relating to Tibet in previous weeks, but this is not Games time.”

It looks like Mr Kevan Gosper could be right; the country has already shown a few signs of improvement. The country has just lifted a block on access to the BBC website, which had been in place for a few years. However, open access to Wikipedia remains blocked in the country, reportedly because of its coverage of sensitive issues.

Source:

BBC
The Times