Cyber-dissident

A cyber-dissident is a professional journalist, an activist or citizen journalist who posts news, information, or commentary on the internet that implies criticism of a government or regime.

The practice of cyber-dissidence may have been inaugurated by Dr. Daniel Mengara, a Gabonese scholar and activist living in political exile in New Jersey in the United States. In 1998, he created a website in French whose name Bongo Doit Partir (Bongo Must Go) was clearly indicative of its purpose: it encouraged a revolution against the then 29-year-old regime of Omar Bongo in Gabon. The original URL, http://www.globalwebco.net/bdp/, began to redirect to http://www.bdpgabon.org in the year 2000. Inaugurating what was to become common current-day practice in the politically involved blogosphere, this movement's attempt at rallying the Gabonese around revolutionary ideals and actions has ultimately been vindicated by the 2011 Tunisian and Egyptian revolutions, where the Internet has proved to be an effective tool for instigating successful critique, opposition and revolution against dictators.

At least two nonprofit organizations are currently working to raise awareness of the contributions of cyber-dissidents and to defend them against the human rights violations to which some of them are subjected: Global Voices Online and Reporters Without Borders. The latter has released a Handbook For Bloggers and Cyber-Dissidents and maintains a roster of currently imprisoned cyber-dissidents. The Committee to Protect Bloggers has been created [2]

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