· January, 2008

Stories about Freedom of Speech from January, 2008

Afghanistan: Journalist in Danger

  31 January 2008

Nasim Fekratْ urges action on the death threats that are addressed to Basir Ahang, 27, an independent journalist who was directly involved in the release of Gabriele Torsello, the Italian journalist, who was kidnapped by Taliban in Helmand province.

China: Hu Jia's family become human “state secrets”

  30 January 2008

And likely very skinny ones at this point, having been locked away from journalists and lawyers and bringers of milk formula for over a month now. Since AIDS activist-turned house arrested blogger Hu Jia's arrest, he's been described as a one-man human rights organization, that bloggers like him are the...

Yemen: Free Kareem Site Blocked

  30 January 2008

Yemeni blogger Sami Noman says that the Free Kareem site is blocked in his country. Free Kareem was set up by activists to call for the release of Egyptian blogger Kareem Nabil Sulaiman, who has been sentenced to four years for insulting Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak and Islam on his...

Egypt: TV Producer Howida Taha Arrested

  30 January 2008

“Howida Taha Al-Jazeera's producer who is standing in front of the Egyptian courts for the charges of defaming and spreading lies about Egypt , the Egyptian police and interior ministry was arrested today for filming documentaries without permission !!!” announced Egyptian blogger Zeinobia.

Belarus, Latvia: “Ploshcha”

  29 January 2008

Marginalia watches Ploshcha (“The Square”), a film about the March 2006 mass protests in Minsk – “and watching it is a good way to mark Ceauşescu's birthday and Suharto's death” – and muses on freedom in Latvia and the lack of it in Belarus.

Tunisia: Four Lebanese Jailed for Facebook Remark

  29 January 2008

Tunisian Subzero Blue wonders after reading about the arrest of four Lebanese students for making crude remarks on Facebook: “When people get thrown into jail for stuff like this you can't help but feel how long the road ahead still is. Should this really be an issue? Don't these judges...

Iran:”Women Magazine” was banned

  28 January 2008

Razeno informs [Fa] us that “Women Magazine” after being published for 16 years,was banned by Iranian government today,on 28th of January.The blogger says that this magazine published an article about “martyrdom seekers”. Article's title was “they go to be killed in order to kill”.You can see the cover of the...

China: Auditing Device for Censorship

  28 January 2008

CNbeta has an anonymous post about new censorship method. It is an auditing device for tracking down uploading and downloading content at schools, hotels, internet cafe, etc.

Yemen blocks independent news websites

  25 January 2008

Numerous Yemeni websites have been blocked recently by government-controlled ISPs. Among them is the popular YemenPortal, Yemen’s first multi-source news crawler and search engine, which extracts headlines from news sites that are being blocked by the authorities. YemenPortal is inviting Yemeni internet users to access the website through a mirror they build at yemen.arabiaportal.net.