Wanna be a dissident?
October 17, 2007
You wanna be a dissident? O.k. Start saving. Find transportation to one of the few Internet cafes that are available in the capital city of Ashgabat. Now give the government-tasked guards at the door your identification before logging online. Alright its time to voice your thoughts and express yourself to the world.
Go ahead, speak your mind. Think about where you gained the knowledge, thoughts and ideas to speak of your dissatisfactions. Your local school? News that seems to have holes in it? The information available from which to rebel is what is made available. There is no independent media.
Turkmenistan is not a place to Google anything. Turkmenistan is a country where the few who are fortunate enough to have access to the internet must proceed with caution and use it carefully. For the usual reasons of- politics, power, security concerns and social norms, Internet usage is restricted to approved organizations, accredited foreign journalists and embassies.
Visitors to Turkmenistan must register with government administrators in order to log online, but even then they can only pull up websites with favorable views of the Turkmenistan government. Less than 1% of Turkmen citizens are surfing the web and those who are do so under the watchful eye of government. There is no home connection. Some argue that Turkmenistan cannot make the claim of being a country with access to the internet if the majority of the population cannot afford it.
In light of the strict monitoring of online activity, major news organizations such as The New York Times, BBC and CNN have managed to remain available in a country where access to the Internet is a scarce resource and the struggle for a true world wide web remains to be seen.
