World Day Against Cyber Censorship 2021 : RSF expands its digital library on Minecraft and discloses the extent of Chinese cyber censorship

To mark World Day Against Cyber Censorship on 12 March, RSF has inaugurated two new rooms in its “Uncensored Library” located inside the computer game Minecraft.  Launched a year ago, this digital library allows players to read censored articles from Saudi Arabia, Mexico, Russia and Vietnam. This year, the library has been expanded to include Belarus and Brazil, countries where free access to news and information is increasingly difficult.

The library is available on Minecraft via the server address visit.uncensoredlibrary.com and can be downloaded from the dedicated site www.uncensoredlibrary.com hosted on a separate server. Available on social networks via the hashtag #TruthFindsAWay, the library has been downloaded by more than 300,000 people, making censorship almost impossible.

Cyber censorship in China

On 12 March RSF has also issued a statistically-backed review of Chinese cyber censorship. Since the rise to power of President Xi Jinping in 2013, the Cyberspace Administration of China has deployed a wide range of measures to censor the Internet and control online information. Figures compiled by RSF confirm that censorship has reached unprecedented levels in the country.

>>> See China’s censorship figures <<<

Operation Collateral Freedom circumvents censorship of news websites

Censorship of independent media sites is a strategy used increasingly by press freedom predators. RSF is continuing with Operation Collateral Freedom and has made 34 censored websites in 18 authoritarian countries accessible using the “mirror” technique, in which censored sites are duplicated and copies hosted on international servers belonging to the world’s Internet giants

>>> See the list of websites unblocked by RSF here   <<

RSF will maintain Operation Collateral Freedom while it has the means to do so. You can contribute to the campaign:

●  By sharing this data using the hashtag #CollateralFreedom and raising awareness of the work of the blocked websites.

●  By making a donation to help us finance the operation.

World Day Against Cyber Censorship, also known as international day of freedom of expression on the Internet, was launched in 2008 and is designed to highlight all forms of cyber censorship around the world.