· May, 2007

Stories about Digital Activism from May, 2007

Rising Voices Seeks Micro-grant Proposals for Blog Outreach

  31 May 2007

Rising Voices, the outreach arm of Global Voices, is now accepting project proposals for the first round of microgrant funding of up to $5,000 for new media outreach projects. Ideal applicants will present innovative and detailed proposals to teach citizen media techniques to communities that are poorly positioned to discover and take advantage of tools like blogging, video-blogging, and podcasting on their own.

Morocco: Punish YouTube Blockers

“People behind the blocking of Youtube in Morocco have to be reprimanded in proportion with the damage caused from ban. The news has made its way to BBC,New York times, Washington Post and a plethora of other news outlets in the world causing an unwanted negative advertising of a Kingdom...

Egyptian Blogger Monem to Be Freed

Jailed Egyptian blogger Abdulmonem Mahmood is being released on Saturday - but Egyptian bloggers are holding their breath and are full of apprehension on their future in a country which has so far conducted a witch hunt on bloggers, reports Freedom For Egyptians.

Kenya: Mobile Toolkit Workgroup

  31 May 2007

White African writes about Mobile Toolkit Workgroup meeting in Nairobi, Kenya: The first 3 days were taken up with examples and stories of how mobile technology is being used as an effective tool within NGO’s that have a focus on human rights and social advocacy. A typical question at these...

Hong Kong: Take it to the UN!

  31 May 2007

A new blog called, take it to the UN, has been set up to file the complaint of the recent censorship cases by the Television and Entertainment Licensing Authority (TELA) to the Committees of Human Right Council of United Nation.

Africa: mobile phones and activism in Africa

  30 May 2007

Black Looks writes from Kenya, where she is attending a conference on the use of mobile phones for activism and advocacy in Africa: “I am here in Nairobi at one of the most interesting gatherings I have attended in a long time. Fahamu have brought together some 40 African social...

Morocco: ban on YouTube lifted

The block on the video-sharing Web site YouTube has been lifted yesterday and the Moroccan blogsphere is celebrating its victory and planning to continue the struggle to unblock Google Earth and Livejournal. “Najib Omrani, a spokesman for the state-controlled telecommunications company Maroc Telecom, said Moroccans were unable to access YouTube...

Hong Kong: Migration of Websites

  30 May 2007

Duke of Aberdeen comments on the Television and Entertainment Licensing Authority's advice of the suspected “indecent” photo at inmediahk.net, and points out that one of the consequence is a migration wave of website hosting out of Hong Kong as the government is targeting on local ISP and BSP (zh).

Hong Kong: Censorship Bureaucrats

  30 May 2007

Roland Snoog has translated the article from Inmediahk.net on the author's encounter with the staff from the Television and Entertainment Licensing Authority (TELA) who gave an “advice” to the website to remove a nude photo. See also ESWN

Egypt: Blogger being Watched

From Egypt, Issandr El Amrani links to an article by Egyptian blogger Wael Abbas, who is back from a visit to the US and is worried about his safety back home. “Last Thursday, I returned to my country, Egypt, after several weeks in the United States on a Freedom House...

Hong Kong: Remixing Government Propaganda Song

  28 May 2007

Plastichk has remixed the Hong Kong government Propaganda Song (zh) for the 10 years anniversary of re-unification of Hong Kong to China. It is a mockery to the recent comments by Pro-China Party Chair, Ma Lik's comment on June 4. The two days hit rates from youtube is two times...

Update on YouTube in Morocco

Although no cause for the blocking of YouTube by service provider Maroc Telecom has been ascertained, the current speculation is, as Moonlight mentions, is: La raison de cette censure serait la publication par ce site de 2 vidéos d'un islmaiste malade mental qui (en cachant bien son visage bien sur)...

Interlocals Citizen Reporter Fellowship

  28 May 2007

Interlocals.net has announced its citizen reporter fellowship project: To promote cross-border citizen reporting and dialogue among people from different localities, interlocals.net announces a fellowship project for bloggers and citizen reporters to travel to another country to conduct cross-border exchange, research and reporting.

Hong Kong: Flickr photo got warned

  28 May 2007

Inmediahk.net's editor (it is me) got a warning phone call from Television and Entertainment Licensing Authority about a filed complaint to a photo sharing link to flickr. The Authority advised the website to take down the photo or fix a pop-up warning message. The author (which is me again) of...

Hong Kong: Free Culture Foundation

  28 May 2007

Hong Kong In-Media has announced the launching of free culture foundation to defend internet free speech space last weekend. The foundation is to provide legal, finanical and organizing assistances to individual and organization.

Internet Censorship Law Proposal in Israel

Internet censorship could slowly and surely find its way to Israel. Now that a new proposal “that is supposedly meant to protect kids from the dangers of pornography, violence and gambling sites” has passed the primary voting stage in the Israeli Knesset, bloggers writing in Hebrew are asking: What is...

China: Student hits teacher video

  28 May 2007

Think Chinese high school students today are Party drones? Or unruly punks? How about their teachers? Cellphone footage of a student smacking a teacher hits the video sharing website circuit and the Chinese internet community hunts the boy and his home address down.