Internet Governance and Terrorism in the Context of the Chinese Compression of Fundamental Rights and Freedoms

Abstract

AbstractThe Article analyzes the Internet governance in the Chinese context, with a particular focus on the Xinjiang Uighur Special Administrative Region. China is characterized by a tamed version of the Internet, whose governance is founded on the interaction between a highly sophisticated set of censorship tools and psychological self-censorship. In the Xinjiang Uighur Region, this architecture bonds with the war on Islamic terror. Indeed the censorship grip is stronger in the Islamic region, resulting in frequent cut off from the national Internet and in a slow connection speed. Moreover, the Xinjiang has turned into a laboratory for new censorship tools, which further compress rights and freedoms. Here the infringements affect, besides first generation rights (as in the rest of China), also second generation rights, towards which the government usually shows a great commitment. The result is a censorship that creates two different Internet, thus creating a discrimination between Uighur Chinese and Han Chinese.