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| Children play video games at an internet café in Phnom Penh, Thursday, Dec 13, 2012. Photograph: Hong Menea/Phnom Penh Post |
14 December 2012
By Meas Sokchea
The Phnom Penh Post
Rights workers cautioned yesterday that a sweeping ban on internet cafés near schools was little more than a thinly veiled act of censorship.
Issued last month by the Ministry of Post and Telecommunications, the circular says all internet cafés within 500 metres of a school must be closed, and bans gaming.
“This heavy-handed effort to shut down affordable and accessible venues for using the internet in Cambodia is not only legally unfounded, it is a transparent attempt to block part of the population’s access to independent sources of information through news sites and social media,” Naly Pilorge, director of rights group Licadho, said in a statement, which goes on to liken the circular to cyber-crime legislation in China and Vietnam.
Both countries have been heavily criticised for their extreme internet restrictions, which have seen numerous free-speech advocates arrested under the draconian laws.
No such laws exist in Cambodia, though a proposed cyber law – on which precious little information has been released – has drawn concern from rights groups.
Director of the ministry’s Inspection Department, Chem Sangva, dismissed the criticism yesterday, and insisted there was no ulterior motive behind the circular.
“The students who should be studying have grown completely absorbed in these games,” he said.
“We are thinking only of improving the Khmer’s future.”
Asked whether the government intended to censor information, Sangva called such accusations “fiction”.
3 comments:
The ban on Internet Cafe in the vicinity of 500 m (esp. in Phnom Penh) of the schools in Cambodia absord idea and absolute wrong.
Only distance 500 meters is not far for them, if the kids want to play, they can find other places to play right away or at their home, are they think that the children are stupid and don't find other places for play Game?
In fact, in order to aviod the school children from game on internet, the govt. must to take care on the education system in the whole country and the good breeding to them. That's the very sensible solution in the modern society, not simply prohibittion without investigate regardless of the root cause.
In Europan countries, many Internet Cafe locate even directly from the school door. Why the children these countries can learn well and why those governments don't banned diese Internets? But just in Cambodia?
Or the government has other intentions?
School in the development countries in the world have internet. DOES CAMBODIAN SCHOOL HAS ONES. IF NOT WHY? BANNING INTERNET 500 METERS FROM THE SCHOOL IS NOT A GOOD REASON. SHAME ON YOU AH HUN SEN. YOU ARE TRASH!
This regime want to do what they devise and that is the communist system that they's never give up. Between 1979-1986, I've never forgotten what they did against Cambodian people in the whole country, esp. in Phnom Penh. At the time they banned all Khmer people to listen the radio VOA if someone did those was punished. Now from day to day they go back the old root because the Khmer is forgotten very quickly.
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