Turkmen Internet Users Fearful of Bypassing Censors

The repressive atmosphere and strict control over Internet use in Turkmenistan has meant that web users know little about censorship circumvention tools and those that do are fearful of using them.

At the beginning of April, US-based rights watchdog Freedom House published a special report aimed at helping users in internet-restricted environments to counter internet censorship.

The report, entitled Leaping Over the Firewall: A Review of Censorship Circumvention Tools focuses on selected countries like Azerbaijan, Burma, China, and Iran. It assesses a range of circumvention tools used to bypass internet blocking systems based on their technical merits and on the experience of people who use them.

Combining such tools enables an internet user to employ a proxy – a server acting as an intermediary – to accept requests for accessing a blocked website; and to set up an encrypted “tunnel” preventing such requests from being seen by sending them as encrypted data via the Internet.

In its annual report on Internet freedom published in March, the press freedom organisation Reporters Without Borders named Turkmenistan among the top ten enemies of Internet freedom. It criticised the Turkmen government for practicing widespread censorship.

When President Gurbanguly Berdymuhammedov came to power in 2007, he allowed some access to the web, marking a change from the isolationist policies of his predecessor Saparmurat Niazov. But many barriers to Internet access still remain.

Although it is possible to get web access at home or at one of the country’s 30 internet cafes, the authorities impose tight controls, blocking foreign websites and even social network sites they do not approve of. Visitors to internet cafes have to present an ID and any messages they send and the pages they look at will be logged.

According to Internet Word Stats, the number of Internet users in Turkmenistan - mainly teenagers and students, as well as staff members of international organisations and journalists - is around 80,500 in a country with the population of five million.

Internet users in Turkmenistan interviewed by NBCA were largely unaware about the Freedom House publication with some of them noting that they don’t know anything about circumvention tools.

There was a widespread consensus among them that – even if they knew about them – they would avoid using them, fearing this would attract the unwanted attention of the authorities.

An analyst based in the Turkmen capital Ashgabat told NBCA that Turkmen users do not need circumvention tools, as they only look for “harmless” and accessible information”.

A correspondent with the state newspaper Neutral Turkmenistan, who had not heard about the Freedom House report, said using such tools can put people in danger, “At the moment, no one will even think about it!”

An activist with an NGO expressed a similar view, explaining that if a person does something that looks suspicious to authorities, he and his family become vulnerable.

“People’s curiosity and desire to do something to bypass draconian bans [is not an option for many] as it is not only the person who shows his curiosity that will suffer but also his family and friend,” the activist said.

A TV journalist with the state broadcaster complained that restricted Internet access prevents him from downloading files on video editing which can be found on websites included on the banned list of opposition sites and those of international human rights and media support organisations.

But he points out that even if he were able to download the files, he would not be able to make use of them, “ If I was able to bypass the Internet blocking and find the book I need, who will allow me to apply in practice the information I learned from it?”

This article was produced as part of IWPR's News Briefing Central Asia output, funded by the National Endowment for Democracy.