A sign of a truly free democracy is a truly free press. Now you may think that freedom of the speech is a concern of the past and that everyone can just say what they want now. However, something as fundemental as freedom of speech is a right not everyone is privileged to even in the 21st century.
Some attribute political correctness as a threat to freedom of speech but that is not what I want to address.
It’s 8 O’Clock in Heathrow airport. I remind my friends that they will not be able to contact me through WhatsApp, Instagram or gmail for the Easter holidays. I might need to have this article uploaded on my behalf. Last year, WhatsApp was fine. I even had a working VPN. This is because I’m going back to my home country: China.
The “Great Firewall” heavily restricts internet access. The people see only what the government wants them to see. Most in the West would have heard of the Tiananmen Square Massacre, but many Chinese wont be able to recall. Prodding around the censored Chinese version of Quora and Google you will find nothing questioning the massacre or the campaign for democracy in Hong Kong that got Instagram blocked in 2014. Just mentioning these is enough to get a website blocked.
This issue is not only one found in China. In many other countries, the press and internet are limited. In a few you are faced with death lest you voice an unpopular opinion but why do these countries reject what should be a right? Freedom of speech and press would be destabilising.
Is freedom worth political turbulence? The answer may seem obvious to you but some people may not think so. The Chinese celebrate the communist party while the west thinks it is tyrannical because it stabilised the country. So perhaps implementing true freedom of speech isn’t as simple as destroying the fire wall. It’s a fundemental fault in the structure of this one party government slowly transforming into a surveillance state.
