German TV show helps to bybass Chinese censorship

[Pater Alf]

I just open this thread to make the campaign of the german satirical TV show "Extra 3" more popular. It should help to give Chinese people access to sites that are censored in their country:

"For the opening of the Olympic Games in Beijing the German TV-show Extra 3 starts a campaign supporting freedom of speech in China. Through this site we will publish censored pages of Human Rights Organisations such as Amnesty International, the Society For Threatened Peoples and the International Campaign For Tibet. This Extra 3-page is not censored by Chinese authorities at the moment and therefore gives Chinese people the opportunity, to gather relevant and oppressed information.

Extra 3 encourages internet-users throughout the globe to join us in the fight for freedom of speech. Let us try to inform Chinese people about this service, let us send information to China using every available channel bypassing the censorship."

http://www3.ndr.de/ndrtv_pages_std/0,31 ... 42,00.html

I really like this campaign as I think that freedom of speech and freedom of press are one of the most important human rights. What do you think about it?

[Scythe]

A lot of Chinese people are very proud of their country, very nationalistic, and do not think that the west is trying to help them, or is good for them. This "saving the world" thing is no good if they don't want to be saved. In fact, I think it's somewhat condescending (in a "we know better" kind of way). I'm convinced there must be far better ways to reach out.

But I'm just a bitter person, who doesn't believe in any greater goods in this FU world. And I realize that, but it doesn't improve my view of the world.

[Pater Alf]

You are right that there are a lot of Chinese people that are proud of their country and the things China archieved and who don't want to know or believe anything else as their leaders and Chinese communist party tells them. I don't think this campaign was made for them.

But there are also a lot of Chinese people who are not content with the situation, their leading party and the way information, free speech and free press are oppressed in China. They might be happy about a campaign like this.

And I don't think that this campaign is about "saving the world" or telling people what is right or wrong. It is about censorship which is always a bad thing in my eyes. How should one be able to build an own oppinion when he/she is not allowed to hear different sides of a story??

[Scythe]

I was extra bitter last night, as I had just witnessed some lows of humanity in action. My belief in humanity as a species worth saving is at an all time low. I will leave your topic in peace.

[Pater Alf]

No need to leave this thread. If you have an oppinion about the topic just tell it. After all this is a discussion forum where everybody is allowed to say what he/she thinks...

[SFault]

"This Extra 3-page is not censored by Chinese authorities at the moment"

I don't think it will take long to censor the site. Or have I missed something? Do they have some kind of method to prevent the censorship?

[Pater Alf]

No, I don't think so. They give away the documents as .pdf files. Somewhere it is said (can't find the link anymore) that this makes it more problematic to just ban the sites, but I don't know why.

I think the whole campaign is more a symbolic one. But there might even be good results. Of course the Chinese authorities will censor the site after a while (there were some reports about the campaign in international newspapers, so they will know about it soon), but so far several partners and other sites joined the campaign and so the censored contents are now available on even more sites that seem to be unsuspicious at first. If just enough people and sites join the campaign it will be impossible to find and censor all of them after a while.