· April, 2006

Stories about Freedom of Speech from April, 2006

Zambia: Freedom to be heard

  24 April 2006

Zambian blog, Real Life of a Journalist posts on a local project “ Freedom to be heard Campaign through Radio” which would help to provide ….”a medium for people especially women and children to express them selves to government leaders, community heads, civil society heads and the rest of the...

Bloglogue: US Dollars & Democracy in Iran!

Bloglogue’s first issue was about Iran in Media and several bloggers & non bloggers from different countries took part in discussion. Second issue is about a very hot issue: US 75 million dollars help to promote democracy in Iran. Five bloggers including two Americans, one Finnish and two Iranians joined...

A Burmese Joke

  23 April 2006

Cambodia blog uncovers the reason why people in Myanmar go overseas when they need a dentist.

Haiti: Sixth Anniversary of Jean Dominique's Assassination

  22 April 2006

To commemorate the 6th anniversary of slain Haitian journalist Jean Dominique's death, blogger AyitiCherieConnexion talks (FR) about his life, his death and Jonathan Demme's The Agronomist. The blogger also treats us to a slideshow of the human rights activist in action.

Belarus: “Public Repentance”

  21 April 2006

Iryna of TOL's Belarus Blog writes about “public repentance” taking place in Belarus now: “Students, who spent 10 to 15 days in prison after being arrested on the Square or during the March 25th demonstrations, are being forced to declare publicly that their legal participation in peaceful protests against election...

Belarus: Conference on Mass Media

  21 April 2006

Edward Lucas, the central and east European correspondent of The Economist, has been invited to an unlikely conference on “integration of Belarus into the world media landscape” in Minsk, sponsored by the Belarusian government, but he doubts he'll be granted a Belarusian visa.

China: Missing persons unbloggable

  21 April 2006

With screenshots and a statement from Microsoft, the Asiapundit blogger counters the assumption of some that the MSN Spaces blog of illegally-detained Beijing or Bust blogger Wu Hao‘s sister Nina has been blocked: “There was an outage of the service for those who were using China Telecom's ISP service –...

China: Hu Jintao heckled

  21 April 2006

Richard and readers at The Peking Duck add to the discussion on Chinese president Hu Jintao's heckler at the White House yesterday: “I admire this woman's courage though I don't in any way admire her organization. I don't see anything wrong with the way she was handled, though there's something...

China: Hu's heckling approved?

  21 April 2006

Was Chinese president Hu Jintao set up for face loss in his visit to the United States this week? The EastSouthWestNorth blogger posts photos and translates an analysis which recounts Hu's stop at the White House yesterday and suggests why that might be so: “During the speech, there was a...

Political discussions on blogs in Singapore

  20 April 2006

May 6th will be the polling day in Singapore's general elections this year. Tinkertailor comments on Tomorrow.sg and refers to a clarification by the authorities on the issue of political discussions on blogs and podcasts. There is no outright ban on discussions but the sites that consistantly promote a particular...

China: Google's compromises

  20 April 2006

Shak at Chinawhite, via Imagethief, gives us a sneak preview of Google in China: The Big Disconnect, a feature story to be published in this coming weekend's New York Times Magazine: “Brin's team had one more challenge to confront: how to determine which sites to block? The Chinese government wouldn't...

Landing at the Iraqi Blogodrome

As a postscript to the 1970 Gil Scot Heron poem ‘The Revolution Will Not Be Televised‘, There will be no highlights on the eleven o'clock news… The Revolution Will Not Be Televised The revolution will be no re-run brothers; The revolution will be live. The revolution will be blogged. And...

What is self-censorship?

  20 April 2006

Many people think that in China the state media is censoring content online and offline vigorously under government order. However it's not always true since many of the censorship works are not done by the government officials but self-censored. Followed is a translation of recent blog post by Zhao Maoyu...

Belarus: No BBC in Belarusian

  20 April 2006

br23 blog reports that there are no plans to launch BBC Service in Belarusian because Douglas Alexander, British minister, thinks the coverage of Belarusian affairs in Russian and Ukrainian is sufficient.

Unbuilding bridges

  19 April 2006

There's no bridge, and a lot of troubled water in Malaysia. It's all about the cancellation of Malaysia's plan to build a bridge to Singapore. Jeff Ooi has been following the fallout and also wondering whether the Malaysian press was gagged over the story.

Jedi elections. In Singapore?

  19 April 2006

mrbrown emphasises that his most recent podcast does not contain “explicit political content” because that is prohibited during the election period under the Singapore's Election Advertising Regulations. Instead it is about “a galaxy far far away” which happens to contain a complex civilisation holding elections.

Manila – blogging conference capital

  19 April 2006

In the Philippines many bloggers are, understandably, excited by not one but two conferences on blogging and the internet taking place in the capital Manila. In one part of town there is the second Philippine Blogging Summit iBlog2. Blogger disini judges it a success: We had more speakers (5 times...