(AKI) - Thousands of websites in the United Arab Emirates were blocked on Monday, according to an email statement sent by DU, one of the country's major Internet service providers, to all its users. The list of websites that have been blocked does not only include anti-Islam sites or those that are deemed morally inappropriate, but also various information sites such as the Arab Times.
In the past, only the Ittisalat Internet service provider blocked the access to sites that were considered "morally harmful". The Internet users in the free-trade zone of Jabal Ali and Media City, were excluded from the move to censure the websites.
Limiting access to the Internet in the Persian Gulf and the Middle East is not a new phenomenon. A joint report carried out by Oxford, Cambridge, Toronto and Harvard universities listed Iran, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Oman, Tunisia and Yemen in a list of countries that filter out websites. A well-known Saudi blogger, Fuad Ahmed al Foran, was jailed last December for criticising the government in Riyadh in his blog and a Bahraini blogger and human rights activist, Abdullah Mohsen, was also recently arrested. |