Disclaimer

This website reflects my own personal views and not that of the U.S. Government nor, more specifically, the Peace Corps.

Tuesday, January 25, 2011

E-Censorship in Cambodia or "Irony"

So, as this blog needs to remain as apolitical as possible, I'll simply explain the situation, and through the use of words such as "allegedly" and "denies", you can "assume" the way I feel about the situation.

As of January 19th, the Ministry of Interior blocked the domain "blogspot" due to comments and accusations made by the liberal media group KI Media. KI Media accused Cambodian officials as being "traitors", and some comments, though thought by some to have been crossing the line of "freedom of expression", have caused one man to be arrested and jailed. The Ministry of Interior denies this alleged accusation, however there have been multiple confirmations from several ISPs (Internet Service Providers) such as Cellcard and Metfone (which I use) agreeing that they were forced to block such a domain. The M.o.I. seems to be affected by such accusations made by KI Media on their blogspot account and they are restricting use to most internet users to using and/or viewing their or others' blogspot accounts.

This affects me because:

1) This is a blogspot blog
2) Many of my friends use blogspot

Should this affect the entire umbrella of the blogspot domain or could this have been an isolated incident with KI Media?

Should the government have done what they did or should they have simply denied the accusations made upon them and done nothing else thereby alleviating any suspicion of truth?

The answer is: I don't know (I didn't read the blog post) and I don't care. I just want to be able to read my brother and sister-in-law's and my many fellow Peace Corps Volunteers' blogs.

I can post this (obviously) and promise that I will continue to post here until it is no longer possible. Worse comes to worse, I will change to a wordpress account. However, I don't wish to do any such thing. To be honest, I have been able to check blogger on my Metfone phone, but not using internet explorer or firefox on my laptop. There are some inconsistencies, but it matters not.

Hope all is well.

Talk to you soon,
Garrett

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