More than 100 websites blocked in growing wave of online censorship

Reporters Without Borders is concerned that the number of websites to which access is blocked in Syria has been growing steadily for the past month. More than 100 websites, including the video-sharing site YouTube, the blog platform Blogspot and the email service Hotmail, are now inaccessible. “We call on the authorities to explain what is going on,” the press freedom organisation said. “The number of websites rendered inaccessible doubled in two weeks. We do not believe all this suddenly happened for technical reasons as a common feature of all these sites is that they contained criticism of the government. Under the press code, a court order is required to close down a website. We therefore regard this as arbitrary and unwarranted censorship.” In all, nearly 110 websites are known to be blocked. The latest site to be blocked was Amazon.com on 30 November. When contacted by Reporters Without Borders, the Syria Computer Society, one of the country's main ISPs, said the Internet was not censored that these problems originated in the computers of the individual Internet users. The authorities have been blocking access to the social networking service Facebook on Syria's Internet servers since 19 November without giving any explanation. The Syrian human rights commission's site is also blocked, as is another independent human rights monitoring site. Elaph.com, a news website that is very popular in the Arab world (with around 1.5 million visits a day), is also inaccessible. It has also been censored in Saudi Arabia since May 2006 without any explanation being provided by the Saudi authorities. A Syrian journalist, Habib Saleh, spent 27 months in prison for writing articles for Elaph.com. Syria has become an Internet “black hole” since Bashar al-Assad succeeded his father as president. Access to opposition online publications is systematically blocked, while dissidents and independent journalists are hounded mercilessly when they post articles on the Internet. The authorities used a filtering system called “Thundercache” to control online content, as well as to filter for viruses and prevent pirating of video files. List of blocked sites : 1. http://www.all4syria.org
2. http://www.alnazaha.org
3. http://www.thefreesyria.org
4. http://www.alsafahat.net
5. http://www.akhawia.net
6. http://www.jimsyr.com
7. http://www.syriakurds.com
8. http://www.ikhwansyria.com
9. http://www.soriagate.net
10. http://www.elaph.com
11. http://www.youtube.com
12. http://www.asharqalawsat.com
13. http://www.free-syria.com
14. http://www.opl-now.org
15. http://www.blogspot.com
16. http://www.mokarabat.com
17. http://www.tharwaproject.com
18. http://www.thisissyria.net
19. http://www.arraee.com
20. http://www.syriaview.net
21. http://www.thirdalliance.net
22. http://www.syriatruth.org
23. http://www.shrc.org
24. http://www.hem.bredband.net
25. http://www.dsyria.org
26. http://www.reformsyria.net
27. http://www.hadatha4syria.com
28. http://www.shrc.org.uk
29. http://hras-syria.tripod.com
30. http://alhiwaradimocraty.free.fr
31. http://www.islammemo.cc
32. http://ahyawatan.wordpress.com
33. http://www.kurdistan-times.org
34. http://www.islamonline.net
35. http://www.savesyria.or
36. http://www.aafaq.org
37. http://www.rezgar.com
38. http://www.asharqalarabi.org.uk
39. http://www.damdec.org
40. http://www.yassardimocrati.com
41. http://www.aaramnews.com
42. http://www.ahrarsyria.com
43. http://www.alqanat.com
44. http://www.atassiforum.org
45. http://www.amude.net
46. http://www.efrin.net
47. http://www.kurdistanabinxete.com
48. http://www.binxet.com
49. http://www.yek-dem.com
50. http://www.sotkurdistan.net
51. http://www.qamishlo.net
52. http://www.kurdax.net
53. http://www.keskesor.info
54. http://www.hpg-online.net
55. http://www.islam-kurd.com
56. http://www.knntv.net
57. http://www.kurdroj.com
58. http://www.syriahr.com
59. http://www.odabasham.net
60. http://www.pdksy.net
61. http://www.yekiti-party.org
62. http://www.middleeasttransparent.com
63. http://www.alparty.org
64. http://www.psp.org.lb
65. http://www.pajk-online.com
66. http://www.kurdmedya.com
67. http://www.syrianforum.org
68. http://www.opensyria.org
69. http://www.tsdp.org
70. http://www.kurdnas.com
71. http://www.kdps.info
72. http://www.sos-forum.net
73. http://www.transparentsham.com
74. http://www.knntv.net
75. http://www.hotmail.com
76. http://www.anonymization.net
77. http://www.surfola.com
78. http://www.arabtimes.com
79. http://www.khilafah.net
80. http://www.hizb-ut-tahrir.org
81. http://www.alseyassah.com
82. http://www.democraticsyria.org
83. http://www.khayma.com
84. http://www.tayyar.org
85. http://www.tirej.net
86. http://www.almustaqbal.com
87. http://www.bonjoursham.net
88. http://www.alquds.co.uk
89. http://www.facebook.com
90. http://www.alwatan-alsouri.com
91. http://www.proxify.com
92. http://forsyriaorg.powweb.com
93. http://www.syriatribune.com
94. http://www.welateme.net
95. http://www.shril.info
96. http://www.hamacity.com
97. http://www.almahatta.net
98. http://www.islamway.com
99. http://www.syriaalaan.com
100. http://www.shabablek.com
101. http://www.anonymizer.com
102. http://www.proxyone.com
103. http://www.proxyweb.net
104. http://webwarper.net
105. http://anonymouse.org
106. http://www.guardster.com
107. http://jap.inf.tu-dresden.de
108. http://www.skype.com
109. http://www.amazon.com