Washington, DC, February 24, 2010. Front-line democracy activists joined veteran Washington political figures at a Capitol Hill Press conference yesterday where they criticized the State Department’s actions on Internet freedom.
Two letters to Secretary Clinton signed by democracy activists from China, Iran, Vietnam, Burma, Cuba and other countries were released at the conference. The letters welcomed Secretary Clinton’s Internet freedom speech of January 21, but were critical of the department’s lack of transparency and its failure to apply merit-based criteria in the awarding of grants to promote Internet freedom. In a calm but heartfelt speech, Mark Palmer, former Ambassador to Hungary during that county’s successful transition to democracy, said that he has never been more outraged by the behavior of the State Department than he is now. “I am mystified” he said about the failure of the State Department to immediately award funds allocated by Congress to proven systems used by dissidents around the world to overcome the electronic firewalls erected by authoritarian regimes.
Also speaking at the conference were: former Regan Administration official and Hudson Institute Senior Fellow, Michael Horowitz, Harvard Fellow and President of Initiatives for China, Dr. Yang Jianli; and Iranian democracy and womens’ rights activist, Mariam Memarsadegh. Dr. David Tian, a NASA computer scientist and member of the Global Internet Freedom Consortium (GIF) spoke briefly as well.
Each of the speakers expressed consternation at the State Department’s failure to act decisively to fund existing, field proven, and scalable programs such as those developed by GIF to eliminate firewalls erected by oppressive regimes. Dr. Yang Jianli, a former political prisoner in China for five years, said that when he was released from prison a friend gave him a copy of GIF developed software that allowed him to securely surf an uncensored Internet. Dr. Yang went on to say that today he and most of his colleagues inside China rely on GIF software for bypassing government imposed censorship.
Mr. Horowitz quantified the situation by saying that with as little as 35 million dollars, GIF programs could be scaled up in a matter of months to enable 50 million Iranians to have secure access to an uncensored Internet. “At this level, Internet censorship by the Iranian regime will be eliminated”.
Ms. Memarsadegh added that Internet freedom went beyond the universal human rights of free speech but contributed to quality of life in many dimensions including the sharing of vital information about health and other issues. The letters to Secretary Clinton follow this release.