Stories about Freedom of Speech from September, 2006
Bulgaria, Libya: Save the Tripoli Six
Declan Butler, a senior reporter at Nature, draws attention to the plight of the “Tripoli Six” – five Bulgarian nurses and a Palestinian doctor on trial in Libya: “Can the blogosphere help free the Tripoli six? — innocent medics risking execution in Libya.”
Russia: Countering Media Stereotypes
Yuri Mamchur of Russia Blog, in an attempt to provide “accurate and fair reporting and analysis—without fear or favor” – of Russia, comes up with a list of “10 Western Media Stereotypes About Russia” and offers alternative views on each item.
China: wiki's definition of national security police
Zeng jinyan compares her experience in encountering with national security police with the definition in the Chinese wikipedia, they are very different. And she feels frustrated most of the Chinese people cannot access wikipedia to revise the definition. Zeng's experience is: they never show their identity card, they are beyond...
Iran:An Ayatollah Under Pressure
Irane Emrouz has published a letter from Ayatollah Seyed Hussein Kazemini Broujerdi. This high ranked cleric wrote that he and his followers had been under pressure and torture by the authorities. Ayatollah added the main reason of the pressure on him, is his neutral point of view on politics. Irane...
Pope, Cultural Revolution, Airplane Crash and Kofi Annan
Many people in the Muslim world got angry and protested against the Pope's speech where he quoted Emperor Manuel II Paleologos of the Orthodox Christian Byzantine Empire. Stressing that they were not his own words, he quoted the emperor saying: “Show me just what Muhammad brought that was new and...
Hong Kong: GFW in HK?
Soon after Mister Bijou blogged about the suspected case of PCCW (the biggest telecom in HK and ISP netvigator) filtering out not the south china morning post website. The issue was taken up by ESWN and spread to local blogsphere, and bloggers started to do their own testing and there...
Eastern Europe: Video documents homophobia on the rise
The latest twist in the long-running saga of anti-gay violence and state oppression took place yesterday in Moscow, as an appeals court upheld the earlier lower court ruling to ban Moscow's Gay Pride March in May 2006. The gay rights activists who brought the case will now attempt to challenge...
Iran:Another magazine was banned
According to Pourostad, monthly magazine, Psychology of Society was closed down by authorities [Fa].
Hong Kong: internet censorship
An alert posted by Mister Bijou on PCCW (biggest telecom in HK and ISP netvigator) decision to filter out a website called ntscmp. ESWN picks up the story and urges Hong Kong blogger to test the filtering.
Thailand: First day of the coup
Rumors of a coup had been circulating in Bangkok for weeks, and foreigners like me had been ‘warned’ to be careful, don’t stay out late, move in groups, keep updated with news reports, watch the cable TV. So when it happened last night (Tuesday, Sept 19), I was hardly surprise....
Belarus: News Roundup
TOL's Belarus Blog writes about the new arrests of the opposition activists and about the “extreme and absolutely unacceptable” conditions, in which, according to the Belarusian government, Belarusian students live in the United States. Also, there's a translation of a Russian-language post about the regime's ominous reaction to an innocent...
Lebanon: Pope, Politics, Post-War Casualties and Circumcision
This week Lebanese blogs discusses circumcision, the environment, the Pope's quote on Islam, Lebanese politics, post war hardships and suspicions among other things. Let us start this weeks sampling by answering these questions: What if Google was used to settled battles … who would win? Interested in knowing? Lazarus has...
Thailand: Liveblogging the coup
At least two blogs have been set up solely to cover the unfolding military coup in Thailand – a group blog 19sep which is in English and revolution.blogrevo which is in Thai. Video copies of coup-related announcements are appearing on YouTube. Below is the first televised announcement of the take-over...
Thailand: Coup News Blackout?
Metroblogging Bangkok blogs as the coup unfolds. He says CNN, BBC and all the international cable news channels have gone down and writes: “now just a matter of getting the Internet down…. I'll see you guys when Thailand becomes civilized again…” Kwanzoku has screenshots from the TV news until: “Now...
China: Italian journalist inspires
Earlier this month when Chinese state-owned news agency Xinhua forbid mainland news media from printing foreign news agency content not purchased directly from Xinhua itself, there was lots to be said from the blogsphere. Here [zh] is journalist-blogger X Marden's take: 新华社之声誉 Voice of Xinhua 《外国通讯社在中国境内发布新闻信息管理办法》，为业界所鄙视。本以为新华社之用心，实乃”司马昭之心，路人皆知”。不料还有网友在blog为新华社”申冤诉苦”，认为其扮演”网络警察”之职能败坏国际声誉。某中央媒体极力撇清与”未签约色鬼导演”的关系，刘同学对此不以为然：他们以为自己还有声誉可以维护么？是的，新华社还有什么声誉需要维护的么？ The regulations on foreign...
Knight-Batten Awards: And the winner is…..
It was appropriate that, for an award given for innovations in journalism, overseen by J-Lab (the Institute of Interactive Journalism at the University of Maryland), the news came from my colleague Georgia Popplewell at the ceremony in Washington DC via instant message to London and from there out to the...
Pope, American Embassy and Others
This week was an extremely busy week for all Syrian bloggers, notably Political Blogs had to make a number of updates, since the political atmosphere in syria was swirling with possibilities and different analysis of the aftermath of the latest attack on the US Embassy in Damascus, and the successful...
Iran:Attacking Etemad Meli Journal
Madeh 19 reports Etemad Meli journal's office was attacked by Molotov cocktails. According to the blogger it is second time that Etemad Meli's office was attacked by Molotov cocktails [Fa]. Etemad Meli was founded by cleric Karoubi and is critical regarding Iranian government.
Iran:Blogger was released
According to Hanif Mazroi, the jailed blogger, Mojtaba Samiinejad,was released after being 18 months in jail [Fa].
Russia: “Kadyrov is a Human, Too”
On October 5, Chechen prime minister Ramzan Kadyrov turns 30, the age at which it would be legal for him to become the republic's president. Although he denies striving for this highest post, some people believe he would get there soon. Timur Aliev (LJ user timur_aliev), editor-in-chief of the print/online...
China: influencing foreign correspondents?
ESWN blogs about his experience in interacting with foreign correspondents. Rule no.1: foreign correspondents are not stupid.
