Bahrain Mirror (Exclusive): Reporters Without Borders launched a major operation to unblock 9 censored websites, including Bahrain Mirror website, in defiance of 11 countries that are on its list of “Enemies of the Internet.”

It’s considered to be the first operation of it’s kind. The operation, entitled #CollateralFreedom, was launched today Thursday (March 12) marking World Day Against Cyber-Censorship. Reporters Without Borders has created new links to the 9 blocked sites in 11 countries, and said that the cost of blocking the mirror sites would be too high.

Among these websites is the Bahrain Mirror e-newspaper site, which was blocked since June 2011 in Bahrain and Saudi Arabia. The paper’s directing board; therefore, had to create indirect links all year round.

Describing the newspaper, Reporters Without Borders said that the Bahrain Mirror staff have been playing a game of cat and mouse with the authorities, adding that the addresses of new mirror sites are often posted on Twitter and Facebook and are just as often blocked.

The organization also stressed that “despite the government’s determination to silence it, the Bahrain Mirror has established itself as one of Bahrain’s few independent news outlets.”

Thanks to this new operation, the Bahrain Mirror site can now be accessed at this address

To make this and the eight other chosen sites accessible to the public in these countries, Reporters Without Borders has created mirror copies and has placed each copy with such major cloud hosting services as Amazon and Microsoft, and may also place these copies with Google cloud hosting services as well.

Entitled #CollateralFreedom, this operation takes advantage of the fact that the governments of these countries will not want to block these services although they could. Blocking Amazon or Microsoft would hurt thousands of companies that use them every day. The economic and political cost of blocking the mirror sites would therefore be too high.

Reporters Without Borders will maintain these mirror sites for several months.

The sites participating in Operation #CollateralFreedom:

1. Grani.ru, blocked in Russia, is now available here

2. Fergananews.com, blocked in Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan, is now available here

3. The Tibet Post, blocked in China, is now available here

4. Dan Lam Bao, blocked in Vietnam, is now available here

5. Mingjing News, blocked in China, is now available here

6. Hablemos Press, blocked in Cuba, is now available here

7. Gooya News, blocked in Iran, is now available here

8. Gulf Centre for Human Rights, blocked in United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia, is now available here

9. Bahrain Mirror, blocked in Bahrain and Saudi Arabia, is now available here

This list and it’s updates can also be seen at the Operation #CollateralFreedom website and here

Reporters Without Borders invites Internet users to join in this operation by posting this list on social networks with the #CollateralFreedom hashtag, to help make freely-reported news and information available in these countries,

The arabic issue