Mark Williamson a écrit:
Hello Anthere,
It has already been resolved that most likely censorship of the Kurdish Wikipedia has been by individual netcafes, and not by the government.
Do you have facts to assert this ? I did not see anything else than hearsay.
We have the statement of a ku.wikipedia contributor who confirms he can access ku.wikipedia from his university, but not from a particular netcafe. Also, such actions to censor minority language websites are common in Turkish netcafes.
Because it isn't the government but rather individual businesses, this can be dealt with a little bit less cautiously perhaps because their power is much less, although cordial relations should of course be maintained.
My recommendation is to write a formal letter (in Turkish) to the netcafes where it has been reported and ask them if they have blocked the Kurdish Wikipedia, and if so to please unblock it as it is not harmful and in fact would be beneficial to their business.
HOWEVER, and that is a big "however", editing ku.wikipedia while in Turkey is still a possible risk: recently, a man was sent to prison just for editing the Kurdish DMOZ (Open Directory Project).
The AI involvement I recommended was not related to Wikipedia or any sort of basic censorship, which is in my opinion a restriction on freedom of information but not a violation of basic human rights.
Instead, it was related to this arrest of a man for editing the Kurdish ODP, which is a severe violation of basic human rights.
For Turkey to take such an action right now, when the eye of the world is on them to improve human rights (for EU membership), the imprisonment of a man for editing the Kurdish ODP is certainly something that warrants attention.
However I think I should make it very clear that I think any such involvement should be independent of Wikipedia or ODP officially, even if some editors are involved.
Mark
Independant ? Hmmmm, somehow, I think that any letter send with as a signature the name of an editor and the link to his user page, is not exactly what I would call independant.
Right, so if I sent a letter to the government of Turkey requesting the release of H. Ertas, who was jailed just for editing a Turkish-language Kurdish culture category (not as I said earlier a category on terrorist groups) on DMOZ, there is some sort of requirement that, as a Wikipedian, I sign it "Mark Williamson (Wikipedia user Node_ue)"? There is life outside of Wikipedia, and there is activism independent of Wikipedia. I do not sign letters with my username and the fact that I am a Wikipedian unless it's relevant to the letter itself.
Give it time.
Is this what you tell H. Ertas, who is going to spend the next ten months in prison just for editing a culture category on DMOZ? "Give it time, you will get out of prison eventually"?
Mark
Anthere
On Wed, 15 Dec 2004 01:21:58 -0800 (PST), Anthere anthere9@yahoo.com wrote:
Hi Erdal,
Before anything, I would like to recommand you to very very well check your facts. But I see that you are trying to do this. Have some feedback from all turkish editors. Ask some friends in Turkye to check as well. Perhaps Erik Zachte could help you on checking statistics ? Or another developer might ? (Hashar, can you help on this ?)
The second point is that I would recommand low profile *as much as* possible. I think making major reports to inform anyone on the planet that Turkish government is doing censorship or that there are multiple individual moves in that direction is a *very bad* idea. Same for starting an email campaign and call for help from Amnesty International. Please, do not do this. Avoid threatening the government as well, as you are NOT sure it is the government who might be responsible of it (you are not even sure there is censorship, doubly less for knowing who is the instigator).
Generally, we are not here to say what is good and what is not good, or how authorities should manage their countries. We try to demonstrate that freedom of information is better in the long run, but we are not an advocacy group supporting human rights.
If you "attack" the government, and it is responsible of the current situation, you do not let room for it to politely claim it was all a mistake, apology and restore full access. You do not let room to keep face, you contribute to escalating a conflict. If you "attack" the government and it is not responsible of the current situation, you will upset it toward us, and this will not have good consequences in the long run. Whatever the government, we do not want to be expressely seen as an advocacy group saying what they do is bad, we should rather stay low profile, and remind that we have a strong neutrality policy and are not taking sides.
If you really feel you have to make it known what is going on, I think you should advertise it just as you would in a wikipedia article. Just report facts (decrease of access as shown in recent statistics; report from xxx wikipedians that they cant access the site anymore. Cite your sources if you can (people is tough, but stats do not fear anything). Stick to facts, and do not draw any public conclusion. Do not make a long rant on how horrendous it is that censorship exist, that human rights are not respected. Just let the reader make its own opinion on why access is impaired and where it could come from. You might indeed mention in the article that it might be a temporary technical problem.
In short, let a back door so that the situation can resolve without getting in a war necessarily and upsetting people.
Anthere Wikimedia Foundation
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