Reporters Without Borders (RSN, Reporters Sans
Frontieres) today expressed concern that several countries which have harshly cracked down on use of the Internet were members of a working group on Internet governance that met in Geneva from November 23 to 25 in the run-up to next year's U.N.-sponsored World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) in Tunis.

The press freedom group also notes that another such country, Syria, was at the same time (November 22-23) hosting a summit preparatory meeting to set up a partnership to build an "information society" for the Arab world.

"Holding a summit in Tunisia about the free flow of online information is already absurd," RNS said in a prepared statement, "but holding a preparatory meeting in a country like Syria, where an Internet user is in prison for simply e-mailing a newsletter, is chilling.

"Does this mean the Internet policies of these regimes are acceptable choices for the rest of the world?"

Membership of the working group, WGIG, was decided during the first WSIS summit in Geneva, Switzerland, in December 2003.