Free speech debate simmers at UN communications summit

A debate about freedom of expression simmered at the United Nations communications summit on Thursday as a French campaigner was stopped from attending and China and Senegal defended limits on free speech.

Senegalese President Abdoulaye Wade told journalists at the summit that he regretted having given too much freedom to the press.

"I went too far with these freedoms and noticed that some people do not know how to use freedom," Mr Wade said.

Mr Wade was being asked about legal action against the heads of a private media group after they interviewed the head of breakaway independence movement in the south of the country.

Meanwhile, the head of Reporters Without Borders (RSF), Robert Menard, was denied entry to Tunisia after he flew in to attend the World Summit for the Information Society (WSIS).

His Paris-based group said Tunisian officials boarded the flight from Paris shortly after its arrival in Tunis to say he could not disembark as he was "not accredited" for the summit.

"I have all my papers in order to enter the country, a passport and an accreditation number for the WSIS, and they are telling me I can't come in," Mr Menard said in a phone call to a colleague and reporters at the airport.

Tunisian authorities have said on several occasions that Mr Menard is "subject to a legal injunction" under which he can enter the country only with the permission of a magistrate.

The UN International Telecommunications Union, which is organising the summit, said outstanding legal action following incidents at the Tunisian tourist office in Paris in 2002 meant Mr Menard could not benefit from the immunity granted to summit participants.

Meanwhile, Iranian lawyer and activist Shirin Ebadi met seven Tunisian opposition figures to ask them to end their one-month hunger strike about a lack of freedom of expression in Tunisia.

The 2003 Nobel peace laureate, who was representing civil society groups at the summit, symbolically handed them a box of dates.

"Your good health is essential so that you can continue your struggle for freedom," Ms Ebadi said. "The aim of the hunger strike has clearly been reached and the message has reached the whole world."

Earlier this week, the hunger strikers had called on UN Secretary General Kofi Annan to take "concrete measures" to compel states with poor human rights records to guarantee their citizens' fundamental liberties.

On the first day of the summit, Ms Ebadi had called for international monitoring of government attempts to filter out Internet sites that they regard as seditious.

The censorship was often justified on national security grounds or the struggle against moral corruption and illegal trade, she told some 50 heads of state.

However, on Thursday China told the summit that measures to protect "state security" against the "negative impact" of the Internet were warranted.

"Information and communications technology are more and more present in our daily lives and their negative impact is growing day by day," Vice-Premier Huang Ju said. "For the Internet, we need effective measures to fight against criminal acts using this technology as well as economic fraud, violence, terrorism and anything that harms state security."

China recently obliged Internet search engine Yahoo to hand over data that would allow it to track down a journalist who was critical of the authorities.

RSF unrolled a banner at the summit condemning 15 countries it called "enemies of the Internet" because they filtered out access to websites.

"We wanted to show the black holes of the Web," said RSF spokesman Jean-Francois Julliard.

The group listed Belarus, China, Cuba, Iran, Libya, the Maldives, Myanmar, Nepal, North Korea, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Turkmenistan, Tunisia, Uzbekistan and Vietnam.