Friday 16 September 2011

Most Asian nations realising Internet cannot be tamed

  It's not just dictators. Governments around the world, many of them popularly elected, have tried for years to control the Internet and social media, dismayed by their potential to incite violence, spread mischief and distribute pornography and dissent.

But in Asia, home to everything from free-wheeling democracies to totalitarian regimes and others in between, many governments are increasingly realising that controlling online content, including dissent, just will not work.

Even China, which strongly regulates the Internet and is grappling with how to deal with the extremely popular microblogs read by hundreds of millions of its people, is highly unlikely to block them completely.

"Governments are committing quite a bit of resources and time to block websites and I think it's a panic reaction," says Phil Robertson, Bangkok-based deputy director of the Asia division of Human Rights Watch.

"They have some temporary, immediate discouraging effect but over the longer term, they won't be effective because people will still find a way to get the news they want to hear.

"Once people have been exposed to the Internet and see the power of getting information free to your computer, it's a very addictive feeling of empowerment."

That snowballing of sentiment has played out this year in Egypt, Libya and Tunisia, where governments have been overthrown by movements bolstered by the Internet. The United States tried to block dissemination of the WikiLeaks cables and British Prime Minister David Cameron threatened to temporarily censor social networking sites after riots last month.

Asia is also learning first-hand about the ubiquitous power of the wired world.

In India, authorities were taken aback last month when an anti-corruption campaign multiplied on Facebook, Twitter and other social networking sites and drew tens of thousands of people to protest sites.

But there were no signs the government tried in any way to crack down on the online crusade, even if it could have.

"At the rate in which it gained momentum, I don't think the government actually had the time to ban the movement," said Vijay Mukhi, a cyber-security expert.

Monday 12 September 2011

India probes transfusions after 23 kids get HIV

At least 23 children who received blood transfusions have tested positive for HIV, Indian officials said on Monday as authorities launched an investigation into a government hospital.
The infected children, aged between five to 10 years, suffer from thalassaemia, a rare genetic disorder that requires regular transfusions. Parents said their children received fresh blood at a public hospital in Junagadh district in the western state of Gujarat, 315 kilometres (195 miles) from the city of Ahmedabad.
"We have initiated an inquiry into the case. This is a very serious matter," the state's principal health secretary Rajesh Kishore told  without giving further details. All the 23 children had received free blood transfusions between January and August, reports said.




Earlier, Gujarat's health minister Jay Narayan Vyas told reporters that the children may have been infected after receiving blood "at some other places" but parents have blamed tainted blood at the government hospital.
He also said some pre-transfusion tests at another state-run hospital had found that the children already had been infected with HIV. Indian government estimates that about 2.5 million Indians are living with HIV

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