· May, 2007

Stories about Freedom of Speech from May, 2007

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)...

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.

Cuba: Closure of Venezuelan TV Station

  28 May 2007

“The Venezuelan freight train toward a castro-style totalitarian dictatorship is gaining momentum at a frightening pace with the closure and confiscation of one of the few remaining independent media voices in that country, RCTV, and where is the mainstream American and International media?” asks Babalu Blog, while El Cafe Cubano...

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...

Block of Youtube: the Moroccan blogosphere react

A petition has been launched by Maghrebism to protest the block of the video-sharing site Youtube by Maroc Telecom (Vivendi International). “We demand that Maroc Telecom and Vivendi Universal immediately stop the current online censorship on YouTube and all other services being censored, which is a violation of the right...

Syria: Presidential Referendum and Lebanon Clashes

Today, Syria is reelecting president Bashar Assad for a new seven-year term in office. The process is done through a referendum, which means there will be no other challengers. The referendum paper has a green circle that says "Yes" and a gray one that says "No". The result is expected to be 99.xx% in favour of the president - as is the tradition in Syria for the last 37 years. Yazan Badran sums up the reactions of Syrian bloggers here.

Venezuela: Bloggers Mobilize For and Against the End of Transmission of Radio Caracas Television.

  27 May 2007

Radio Caracas Television's (RCTV) broadcast license was not renewed by the Venezuelan government, which opened up two fronts within the Venezuelan blogosphere. Blogs were created with the sole purpose to discuss this topic, and there was very little room for gray area. Bloggers normally took one of two sides, either "I am with RCTV" (for) or "RCTV from the Inside" (against), which produced thousands of blog entries on the subject.

Morocco blocks access to YouTube

Yesterday, May 25, 2007, it has been reported by numerous Moroccan blogger that Morocco has blocked access to YouTube video sharing website. There have been many ongoing speculations that the ban followed the broadcasting of material critical of the country's king and pro-Western Sahara. This is the third major sites...

Morocco blocks popular video site YouTube

Early this morning, the news broke across the blogosphere that Morocco has joined the ranks of countries like Iran and Tunisia, which already block YouTube. A Moroccan in Washington D.C. posted: “According to postings online and friends in Morocco, access to Youtube is blocked. Nobody knows the reason for this....

Hungary: Human Rights

“The annual Amnesty Report this week has charged Hungary with discrimination against the Roma, a lack of protection for women and not surprisingly, police abuses,” writes Further Ramblings of a N.Irish Magyar.

Kazakhstan against -bashization

Yesterday Sergey Duvanov, a journalist and a human rights activist was arrested for organising the protests on the square in Almaty against the constitutional amendments that exempt Nazarbayev from a limit on the number of the presidential terms. Casio Cisar writes: Duvanov was holding an unsanctioned protest against what he...

Sri Lanka: S. Bose(1975 – 2007), Poet, Editor & Writer

  25 May 2007

The following poem was written by S. Bose, a writer-poet (Tamil) from Vavuniya, Sri Lanka and was translated by a friend of mine for Global Voices Online readers. Chandrabose Sudhakar or S.Bose was shot dead by armed men in his own home on April 16th, 2007. The killers who spoke...

Guyana, Barbados: Press Freedom

  25 May 2007

Antilles, along with many regional newspapers, stands behind Stabroek News in condemning the Guyanese government's advertising boycott of the newspaper due to editorial content – while Barbados Free Press wonders why The Nation News could not have assumed a similar stance with local freedom of speech issues.

Belize: Supreme Court Rules Against Police

  25 May 2007

The Belize Supreme Court has ruled that the police cannot prevent citizens from protesting against the controversial Universal Health Services loan guarantee during today's House of Representatives meeting. Belizean quotes United Democratic Party leader Dean Barrow: “The will of the people obviously cannot be thwarted and the right to dissent...

Thailand: Blogspot Blocked

  25 May 2007

Bangkok Pundit writes about Thai internet service providers blocking blogs hosted on the popular blogspot.com domain. Seems the domain was blocked as there were some blogs hosted on the domain that were deemed offensive by the Thai ministry of communication and information technology.