[Imc-uk-process] fwd from imc-europe: WSIS in Tunis

[ionnek]

Hi,
fwd from imc europe - for those who want to pursue communication rights 
issues. pls fwd to local collectives

background: A year ago, during the first part of the world summit on 
information society (WSIS) in Geneva, some indymedia people participated 
in the "We Seize" initiative.
The Communication Rights in the Information Society (CRIS) campaign 
organised a world forum on communictation rights at the same time. This 
was a reaction of some NGOs who had hoped to be included in the WSIS 
debates, but found themselves on the fringes.
This year, during the ESF, a European Forum of Communication Rights took 
place, with strong participation of some indymedia people.

Now an initiative has started to continue knowledge-sharing and 
campaigning during the second part of the WSIS in Tunis 2005.
Here is a first message on imc europe:


[Imc-europe] Preparation for WSIS II in Tunis(Tunisia)
*sphinx* sphinx at indymedia.org 
<mailto:imc-europe%40lists.indymedia.org?Subject=%5BImc-europe%5D%20Preparation%20for%20WSIS%20II%20in%20Tunis%28Tunisia%29&In-Reply-To=>
/Sat Oct 30 03:42:15 PDT 2004/
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Hello!
During the European Social Forum(ESF) in London (October 2004) some activists 
from the imc-Africa working group(IMC-Ambazonia), Middle East (IMC Beirut),  
IMC UK and Germany held a meeting to start discussions for preparation of 
activities for Part 2 of the UN WSIS Conference built for Tunis(Tunisia) next 
year.

We have just started the discussions and you are invited to participate in the 
process. This far a few things have been done :
-Folks from Europe and the Middle East are taking the discussions on our 
side(Tunis-wsis-lists) and checking them out with the official processes of 
the wsis preparation in Europe and the Middle East and giving feet back to 
the list, so we know what is going on and how much success we can get with 
our own plans for Tunis as well as what possibilities exist in the official 
process.

Some other activists have taken contact with groups like those who organized 
the World Forum on Communications rights during the first part of wsis in 
Geneva to see what we can come up with in reference to organizing a counter 
conference in Tunis. 
So other activists have taken contact with groups involved in the "free the 
airwaves" campaign in the US like radio Berkley. Here the idea is to see how 
to reproduce the successes of this campaign in the US to a world wide 
campaign. The hope is to push for the creating of an international redline on 
radio/media production that can allow people in the world to do Low Power FM 
broadcasting without repression from states nor any need to get any 
authorization from the state. Here we are seeing it like a practical request 
which could mean a lot for lots of communities around the world and get lots 
of support from activists communities. This will mean a lot especially for 
third world countries where radio is one of the main means of communication. 
This will create a legal frame work where dictatorial regime cannot  refuse 
activists the right to run low powered FM by refusing them licenses or by 
simply arrest them as is the case some of the times .Thus creating a kind of 
internet atmosphere as far as legality is concern where the only way to do it 
will be for governments to prove their case against radio activists in court 
and not make the very running of radio criminal as it is now on the bases of 
licenses. If it succeeds one will be in a better ground to support and 
mobilize world opinion to defend activists that get jailed for running LPFM 
radio.  

Some other activists are contacting groups in the Middle East involved in the 
campaign for internet access forthe poor. To see how we can connect.

Link to joining mailing list:
http://lists.riseup.net/www/info/tunis

Link to the twiki pages that we are trying to put together.
http://docs.indymedia.org/view/Global/WSIS

Regards
Sphinx        

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