· March, 2007

Stories about Freedom of Speech from March, 2007

Ethiopia: blog blocked

  31 March 2007

Andrew Heavens blog has been blocked in Ethiopia: Surprise, surprise…meskelsquare.com is now out of sight here. Why would they block a blog which publishes stories about Miscalls and Kenyan web watchdogs? Ahunis enezih sewotch cherkavhewin tilew abedu Of course, blogs on blogspot.com have disappeared once again.

China: Nation's first citizen reporter?

  30 March 2007

Meet Zola Zhou, independent citizen reporter, blogging live from the nailhouse. But is Zola really China's first citizen reporter? Big-name bloggers like Herock, Doubleleaf and Zhan Bin say he is. Out of what Zola says is a ‘sensitivity to news’ and desire for fame, on Monday afternoon he hopped on...

Russia: Politkovskaya

  29 March 2007

Sean's Russia Blog reports on no progress in the investigation of Anna Politkovskaya's death. (Also, Sean mentions that Politkovskaya's last – posthumous – book is coming out in May.)

Bangladesh: Development Against All Odds

  29 March 2007

Bangladesh is one of the most densely populated countries in the world. Bideshi Blond provides the relevant statistics proving the claim. Being a developing country with limited resources it is really tough to take the country forward. No wonder many development activities are being carried out by the government and...

Egypt: Blogger Assaulted

Egyptian blogger Hossam El Hamalawy reports a bizarre incident during the hearing of a case lodged by a judge to block 21 blogs and websites that “harm Egypt’s national interests and defame Hosni Mubarak.” “The court session ended in a circus, with judge Abdel Fattah Mourad who filed the lawsuit...

South Korea: blocking foreign porn sites

  27 March 2007

Matt from Gusts of popular feeling blogs about the recent government policy in filtering out foreign porn sites in South Korea: We're also told that the government “will block around 180 such foreign sites by the end of May”. Wow. All 180 of them. They really aren't kidding around this...

Russia: Variations of Dissent

  27 March 2007

After reading LJ user rudin‘s report (RUS) from the Dissenters’ March that took place in Nizhniy Novgorod this past Saturday, LJ user an_drevv made this ironic remark (RUS): Judging by the ratio between the participants [police outnumbered the protesters], it looks like the majority of the dissenters were cops, and...

Russia: User Guide

  26 March 2007

This has been an eventful weekend, rally-wise. In Minsk, Belarus, water cannons had to be used against several thousand citizens opposed to Aleksandr Lukashenko‘s regime. In Nizhniy Novgorod, Russia, it took some 20,000 police and military personnel to prevent yet another “Dissenters’ March” from happening. In Moscow, however, 3,000 riot...

Egypt: Arrested Activists and Bloggers Released in the Desert

Bloggers Roam the Desert Egypt today released bloggers and other activists arrested in an anti-Mubarak rally in Cairo held the previous day in the desert, according to bloggers. Blogger and journalist Hossam El Hamalawy, who has been closely following the developments, writes: Police released the remaining Kefaya activists in custody...

Belarus: A Roundup

  26 March 2007

TOL's Belarus Blog covers these subjects: silly pretexts used to arrest opposition activists; the Constitution Day; Belarusian “market socialism“; some of the effects of the recent “gas war” with Russia.

Tunisphere: March 20, Mayans and Arabs.

March 20 is normally the day when my fellow citizens celebrate our independence day (3/20/1956). But it also happens to be the celebration of the fourth year of Iraq invasion by the US and its allies and that was reflected on some Tunisian blogs like Temeraire in his post “March...

Egypt: Free Kareem Rallies and What Kareem Wrote

A call has gone out for a second round of worldwide rallies to pressure the Egyptian government to free detained blogger Abdulkareem Nabeel Sulaiman, a 22-year-old former Al Azhar University student, who has been sentenced to four years in prison for articles he wrote on the Internet. On February 22,...

China: Journalist file: Zhang Jianhong

  25 March 2007

Angry Chinese bloggers opened a file for Zhang Jianhong, a freelance journalist, who was sentenced to 6 years imprisonment, plus a further years suspension of political rights, by the Ningbo Intermediate court on 19 of March.

China: Nail House Disappeared From Internet

  25 March 2007

Huge reported that the news about Nail House from Chongqing had disappeared from the Internet in China within two hours: people just wanted to criticize developers, now that the Internet police stepped in, people would scold the government… (zh)

Egypt: Bloggers Among Egyptian Demo Detainees

It is happening all over again..and may recur in a bigger way tomorrow (Monday March 26) as more Egyptians are threatening to take to the streets in protest against proposed amendments to the Constitution. Incidentally, a referendum on the amendments which are to be implemented tomorrow, which aim to –...

The Oldest Blogger in the Balkans

  25 March 2007

In the evening, Radmilo Ristic, a 74-year-old retired high school professor, likes to attend theater plays, gallery openings, literary nights, round-table discussions and other similar events that take place around Kragujevac, the city in Central Serbia. When Ristic comes back home, instead of the traditional paper and pen, his computer...