Syrians defy web blockade

Phil Sands, Foreign Correspondent

• Last Updated: May 20. 2008 4:47AM UAE / May 20. 2008 12:47AM GMT

DAMASCUS // Syrians continue to surf banned web pages, defying an internet purge that has seen hundreds of online sites blacklisted.

The authorities have prohibited access to various news and social networking sites that encourage political activism or are deemed anti-regime.

Thousands of computer users, however, have found their way around the cyberspace blockade, using widely available software to bypass censorship.

In November, when Facebook, the popular online network, was blocked, it had 28,000 registered Syrian members. Five months after the ban, the number of Syrians with Facebook accounts had risen to 34,000.

“It’s not that difficult to overcome these obstructions and get on to a forbidden website,” said Ahmad Mohammed, a manager at Syria Room, a web company in Damascus. “It would take 30 seconds to show someone how to get past the restrictions. They’re not very sophisticated.

“Many Syrian computer users would be able to do this and the software you need often comes built in to PCs if you buy them here,” Mr Mohammad said.

The government has never given a formal explanation for the ban. It may have been enforced after Syrian Facebook groups were hit by a spam campaign that spread anti-regime messages – it was rumoured that the source came from within Israel, a country with which Syria technically remains at war over the Golan Heights. Human rights groups claim that the site was blocked because it allowed civil society groups to organise and push for reform of Syria’s authoritarian regime.

The internet has been available to the Syrian public since 2000, when Bashar Assad, the president, came to power. One of the first reforms Mr Assad, a technophile, introduced was to approve internet access. In the subsequent eight years, internet use in Syria has soared by 4,900 per cent, far in excess of the global growth rate of 249 per cent.

Initially the state blocked free web-based email services, including Yahoo! and Hotmail, but enforced few restrictions on browsing, only blocking sites belonging to radical Syrian Islamic groups and the Kurdish opposition. After 2005, however, liberal political reforms faltered and, with Damascus under increasing international pressure over ties with Iran and its role in Lebanon and Palestine, controls over the internet have been tightened. While email access is allowed, increasing numbers of sites are being blocked.

All internet traffic in Syria must pass through two state-controlled servers, theoretically giving the government power to decide what can and cannot be seen online inside the country. A committee of government officials have drawn up a blacklist of banned sites, which number more than 100 and includes YouTube, blogspot and Islamonline. Also on the list is the Syrian-run site al Nazaha, which means “clean hands” in Arabic. It was started in August 2005 by Abdullah Ali, a lawyer who decided to campaign against corruption.

After two years of publishing articles on corrupt officials and providing archival material to other anti-corruption lawyers, the site was blocked in October 2007, a move Mr Ali insists is unlawful. He decided to sue the government and launched legal action in Damascus Administrative Court – the first such lawsuit to be filed in Syria.

“President Assad called for all Syrians to do their best to fight corruption and that is what I am doing,” Mr Ali said. “I am sure the law is on my side and that through legal channels I will get the blockade lifted.”

Supporters of the site said that those people it identified as corrupt pulled strings to have it added to the blacklist, but they said the ban was not politically motivated.

After beginning the legal action, Mr Ali’s office in Tartouz, on Syria’s Mediterranean coast, was destroyed in a fire. He said he had come under pressure to drop his claim, something he refu-ses to do.

“Syria has rule of law and I want this matter to be tested in court,” he said. “In my opinion, no website should be blocked. We are paving the way for other people to protect their rights.”

Rules about publishing in Syria cover only printed material. The government is trying to rectify this by drafting new electronic publishing regulations to include the internet. Since taking control of Syria in 1963, however, the Baath Party has ruled under emergency laws, assuming sweeping powers it uses to override the constitution on national security grounds.

Various English-language, international websites critical of Syria remain unblocked, but domestic and Arabic sites are subjected to tighter scrutiny. Dr Ammar Qurabi, of the National Organisation for Human Rights in Syria, said a special section in at least one prison had been created that is devoted to supposed internet criminals.

“It’s a wing in Saydarna prison for anyone suspected of ‘internet cursing’,” he said.

“I don’t know how many people are in there, but every week they are arresting new people, sometimes young people who authorities pick up at internet cafes.”

Habib Saleh, a Syrian, was sentenced to three years for the internet crime of “spreading false news”.

According to Dr Qurabi, prisoner Ahmed Shari was incarcerated for three years for forwarding an email from the Levant News, a London-based newspaper banned by Damascus. All internet cafes need operating approval from the security services and are supposed to monitor their customers and maintain detailed logs of their identities and surfing habits. The government justifies these measures as vital to tackle extremism.

psands@thenational.ae