Independent news organizations in authoritarian lands are using a new tool, the Internet, to get out the news, mostly to the wider world. While domestic audiences for publications on paper often cannot act on information because democracy in their countries is short-circuited, news that pulls in the wired world can attract international pressure that affects government behavior at home. It can also increase the danger to those who spread the news of state abuses of power and human rights violations.

¥ In Zambia, The Post, a widely read daily paper, is frequently critical of President Frederick Chiluba's governance of the landlocked nation in the center of southern Africa. Says the newspaper's managing editor, Bright Mwape: "The government has been in a literal state of panic ever since The Post went on the Net. It began responding to international reactions from Internet readers with accusations that the letters were really being written at home by The Post, and then posted from abroad -- quite fantastic!"

A big concern of the government is that the worldwide attention paid to The Post's reporting on state corruption and repression could lead to reductions in badly needed foreign aid. When the February 5 edition of the paper revealed the government's secret plan to hold a March referendum on a draft constitution -- to limit debate, the vote would not be announced until the last moment -- the paper was seized. Yet The Post's Internet host provider displayed the banned issue for two days.

Mwape and The Post's publisher and editor in chief, Fred M'membe, the visionary of The Post online, were charged with publishing state secrets in both the newspaper and on the World Wide Web. M'membe now faces 125 years in prison sentences if convicted; Mwape faces close to a century in prison. Yet the newspaper continues to publish, in print and at http://www.zamnet.zm/zamnet/post/post.html on the Web.

 ¥ In Indonesia, Tempo, the country's largest weekly newsmagazine before it was banned in President Suharto's 1994 press crackdown, has been reincarnated, electronically. As Ahmad Taufik, a former Tempo reporter and president of the country's only independent journalists union, serves out a three-year sentence in prison with several colleagues, Tempo Interaktif continues the investigative reporting that resulted in government retaliation.

 Taufik was convicted last year of expressing "feelings of hostility, hatred or contempt toward the government" after Independen, a magazine published by the journalists' union, reported that Information Minister Harmoko forced newspapers to issue him shares in their companies in return for publishing licenses. Harmoko also banned Tempo when it covered Indonesia's controversial purchase of used East German warships.

Because Tempo Interaktif (http://www.tempo.co.id) is written in Indonesian, it is not widely read internationally, and indeed the "worldwide" Web is not very accessible in developing nations, including Indonesia. That may explain why the information minister has allowed it to continue publishing.

¥ On New Year's Eve, 1995, when The News of Nigeria planned to publish online, a gasoline bomb exploded in the magazine's production center, destroying the computers it had barely been able to afford. The attack had all the earmarks of the methods used by the military dictatorship of General Sani Abacha in handling opponents. "The damage was very specific," says the paper's former editor in chief, Dapo Olorunyomi, who eventually fled to the U.S. to escape arrest. According to Olorunyomi, "The News on the Net would at least have given an immediate international context and concern to what's happening in Nigeria."

Last November, despite an international outcry, Nigeria hanged the writer Ken Saro-Wiwa and eight other activists from the Ogoni region who had peacefully protested Shell Oil pollution in the area. After the executions, amid a Nigerian public relations campaign in the U.S. -- involving millions of dollars and seeking to deter an oil embargo or the freezing of assets -- the bombing kept The News off-line.

cjr  |  archive  |  resources  |  contact  |  search  |  subscribe