It seems that Dhiraagu, the "largest" ISP in the Maldives, has begun to enforce censorship on pornographic websites. Random checks so far indicate that this is in effect for all forms of internet access via Dhiraagu. This block, which began a few days ago, is quite monumental given that so far no ISP in the Maldives has been known to enforce any form of content filtering or censorship other than site-specific access bans on a handful of political websites critical of the current government and its leaders.

Maldives, which officially lauds itself as a 100% Muslim country, has maintained strict bans on import of any sort of pornographic material into the country and enforces it through screening at the Male' International Airport, checks aboard marine vessels and via inspections at the Post Office. The ban does extend to the digital world and there has been atleast one person who has been prosecuted for the access and possession of digital porn. However, the enforcement component of this law does not seem to have been mandated to the ISPs operating in the country as such material has typically been freely accessible. Also, interestingly, partial proxy logs has previously suggested that as high as 70% of internet data flowing in the country may constitute of such material at times.

To me, this is a sudden interesting twist in the story of the Internet in the Maldives and one that needs to be monitored and debated. Internet has been the last remaining oasis of freedom of speech and expression in the Maldives with users expressing themselves unbound, taking part in unhindered debates and engaging in other activities that would typically land serious jail time if done in the “real” world. Internet has also been the only avenue for people to get access to a wide variety of intellectual material - stuff that typically are beyond easy access because of the poor state of our libraries and bookshops and stuff that are beyond access due to strict import laws. If this porn censorship signals the beginning of a wider campaign to block particular content then the freedom that most internet lovers has enjoyed so far may about to be hurled into oblivion.

However, these might be purely paranoid postulations on my part (and I so hope they are!), especially given that Dhiraagu has made no statement about such actions added to the fact that the service from other ISP, Focus Infocom, seems to not have followed suit. A friend at Dhiraagu has suggested that this ban be not official but rather have to do with a mere (temporary) technical re-routing of data through proxies typically intended for use on special connections provided to educational institutions which do carry content filtering for "inappropriate" material.

I might not be arsed enough to object to porn filtering but any more filtering and censorship than that and I object to it entirely – an objection that includes the current access bans on select political sites. Censorship on intellectual material bothers me enough to voice concern even if there is just the mere possibility of it...

PS: Here is a non-exhaustive, extremely tiny list of some of the explicit sites being blocked by Dhiraagu. It was created by an automatic crawler that I wrote to check sites for proxy-based censorship. The list is not meant for anything other than your amusement