Reporters Without Borders denounces press freedom threat in website registration

Reporters Without Borders voiced alarm at Bahrain's decision announced on 24 April 2005 to oblige all websites dealing with the country to register with the ministry of Information. "This does not happen in any democratic country and is a threat to press freedom," the organisation said. Announcing the step, the information ministry said websites had six months from 2 May to register. The ministry's head of press and publications, Jamal Dawood, who drew up the administrative act, told Reporters Without Borders, "This is not a repressive step. On the contrary it is intended to protect people running websites, who in future will be able to protect their rights of authorship." "Registration will be automatic and no-one will be turned down whatever the content." The name, address and telephone number of site administrators would be required on registration. It would be free and there would be no need for any financial guarantees. Dawood admitted that he did not know what a weblog was, but said that even personal websites would have to comply with the new procedure. He added that it would not be possible to register online and registration would have to be done directly at the information ministry. After each registration was validated, the person in charge would receive an ID number that would have to be posted on the site. "Many online publications, such as forums or weblogs, allow Internet-users an easy means of posting an article or remarks," Reporters Without Borders pointed out. "The demand for a single administrator to be named for each website is therefore completely inappropriate for the Internet." "This decision will intimidate online editors and push them into cutting back on their publication's interactive aspects", the organisation added. Mansur Al Jamri, editor of the Bahraini daily Al Wasat told Reporters Without Borders that the measure was a "double-edge sword". "It is to be expected that defamation and insult should be banned on the Internet," he said. "However the information ministry's action could jeopardise freedom of expression. Website editors and forum moderators will become 100 percent responsible for the content of the site, in the same way as a newspaper editor." --