Top Ten countries that heavily censors the internet

Nations often censor political content and may retaliate against citizens who violate the censorship with imprisonment or other sanctions. In some cases, the dictatorships or totalitarian regimes restrict the access to this media and impose prison penalties for uploading any information to personal webpages. Here is a list of the 10 top countries where internet activity is heavily censored.

1. North Korea

The North Korean network is monitored heavily with only two websites being hosted under a domain name. All websites are under government control, as is all other media in North Korea. Only a few hundred thousand citizens in North Korea, representing about 4% of the total population, have access to the Internet, which is heavily censored by the national government. Enough said.

2. Burma

Burma has a very low penetration rate due to both government restrictions on pricing and deliberate lack of facilities and infrastructure.  Burma has banned the websites of political opposition groups, sites relating to human rights, and organizations promoting democracy in Burma. During the 2007 anti-government protests, Burma completely shut down all internet links from its country. However, internet usage is widely spread in the major cities and towns, with internet cafes and chat rooms. The internet speed is deliberately slowed and accessing a range of websites, from politics to pornography are banned by the Ministry of Post and Telecommunications.

3. Cuba

Cuba has the lowest ratio of computers per inhabitant in Latin America, and the lowest internet access ratio of all the Western hemisphere. The government cites its citizens' access to internet services are limited due to high costs and the American embargo, but there are reports concerning the will of the government to control access to uncensored information both from and to the outer world. Citizens have to use government controlled “access points”, where their activity is monitored through IP blocking, keyword filtering and browsing history checking. Only pro-government bloggers and government employees are allowed to upload content to the internet.

4. Uzbekistan

Uzbekistan prevents access to websites regarding banned Islamic movements, independent media, NGOs, and material critical of the government's human rights violations. Some Internet cafes in the capital have posted warnings that users will be fined for viewing pornographic websites or website containing banned political material. Facebook was blocked for few days in 2010.

5. Iran

Iran Internet censorship is delegated to ISPs who attempt to filter contents critical of the government, pornographic websites, political blogs, and especially recently women's rights websites, weblogs, and online magazines. Bloggers that dare to criticize the government or any religious or political figure are detained and harassed. Bloggers in Iran have been imprisoned for their Internet activities. Most recently, the Iranian government temporarily blocked access, between 12 May 2006 and January 2009, to video-upload sites such as YouTube.com. Flickr, which was blocked for almost the same amount of time was opened in February 2009. But after 2009 election protests YouTube, Flickr, Twitter, Facebook and many more websites were blocked again.

6. People’s republic of China

China has the most rigid censorship program in the world. China blocks or filters Internet content relating to Tibetan independence, Taiwan independence, police brutality, the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989, freedom of speech, pornography, some international news sources and propaganda outlets, certain religious movements, and many blogging websites.

7. Syria

In addition to filtering a wide range of Web content, the Syrian government monitors Internet use very closely and has detained citizens "for expressing their opinions or reporting information online." Any blogger who expresses any kind of anti-government feelings, or any kind of opinion that may “jeopardize national unity”, is arrested. Also sites that criticize the government are instantly blocked. Syria has banned websites for political reasons and arrested people accessing them. The owners of Cyber Cafes are obligated to ask all of their customers for identification, leave a name registration and time of use, and report them to the authorities. In addition to filtering a wide range of Web content, the Syrian government monitors Internet use very closely and has detained citizens “for expressing their opinions or reporting information online.”

8. Turkmenistan

Internet usage in Turkmenistan is under tight control by the government. For most Turkmen the internet is considered a luxury due to its high cost, a strategy used by the government to discourage people from using it. The only internet service provider is the government, and it blocks access to a lot of sites, while monitoring all the email accounts in Gmail, Yahoo and Hotmail. Also, websites run by human rights organizations and news agencies are blocked, and any attempt to get around the censorship could lead to grave consequences. Internet is monitored thoroughly by the government as websites ran by human rights organizations and news agencies were blocked. Attempts to get around this censorship could lead to grave consequences.

9. Vietnam

The Government has created an agency exclusively to monitor the content on the internet, blocking websites critical to the Vietnamese government. The government of Vietnam asked Yahoo, Google and Microsoft to give out the information of all the bloggers that use their platforms. Vietnam is in ONI's pervasive category and is on RSF's internet enemy list. Online police reportedly monitor Internet cafes and cyber dissidents have been imprisoned for advocating democracy.

10. Tunisia

Tunisia has blocked thousands of websites, such as pornography, mail, search engine cached pages, online documents conversion and translation services. Tunisian internet service providers must report to the government the IP addresses and personal information of all bloggers on a regular basis, in order to keep them identified and under constant watch. All the traffic goes through a central net with which the government filters all content uploaded and monitors emails. Cyber dissidents including pro-democracy lawyer Mohammed Abbou have been jailed by the Tunisian government for their online activities.