America has always valued free speech. From battling proposed laws against flag desecration to criticizing controls on television to defending a man who called African American girls “nappy-headed hos,” Americans are concerned about this freedom, though sometimes the lines between expression and unacceptable behavior do become gray.Even government controls on the Internet made to inhibit online predators receive scrutiny.
However, it is my observation that the free speech and expression controversies that often receive spotlights in this country are actually trivial.
I say this because other countries have bigger problems with government controls, specifically on the Internet.
A recent example that Turkey has proposed a bill in their parliament to block any Web site that insults the founder of modern Turkey, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk.
This is not surprising, given that, as reported by The Associated Press, it is already “illegal to talk of breaking up the state or to insult Ataturk.”
In March, the Turkish government temporarily blocked YouTube for this reason.
These actions are similar, although more extreme, to those taken by India last year, when the Indian government blocked 17 Web sites they didn’t like, such as those containing certain Islamic and conservative Hindu views, claiming the ban was for security purposes. Many parts of Blogger and GeoCities were also blocked, though only temporarily.
Other countries that are even tougher on blocking Web sites include Iran, Saudi Arabia and Syria, which ban Web sites for moral, religious or even political reasons.
Countries that take these Web site-blocking steps are alarmingly mimicking communist countries such as China, North Korea and Cuba, all of which very heavily censor the Internet.
The Chinese government, according to a 2004-2005 report by OpenNet Initiative (www.opennetinitiative.net/studies/china), blocks numerous Web sites “related to Taiwanese and Tibetan independence, Falun Gong, the Dalai Lama, the Tiananmen Square incident, opposition political parties, or a variety of anti-Communist movements.”
When countries such as India and Turkey block Web sites, it is for the same purposes that the Chinese government does it.
In 2005, the law in Turkey that prohibits insults toward Ataturk and the state was passed shortly after the Nobel Prize-wining journalist Orhan Pamuk made only healthy criticisms of the Turkish government.
And the ban made in India was far from mere security protocol. For instance, one site that was blocked was the Hindu Human Rights’ Web site, www.hinduhumanrights.org, whose aim is to further “fundamental principles of international human rights as applied to all.”
There’s nothing dangerous about that.
America has done well to secure the most important right. When we see some other governments abridging that right, especially by limiting the most limitless form of media, it should cause us only to be more careful we do not do the same.