Stories about Freedom of Speech from October, 2006
Russia: Tribute to Politkovskaya
Sean's Russia Blog posts a tribute to Anna Politkovskaya: “What separates her books from most journalistic accounts is not the acerbic words she uses to condemn those who don’t hesitate to stomp on humanity; it is the deep humanism that pervades her prose. While violence may dehumanize her subjects, often...
Russia: Police Target Ethnic Georgians
Sean's Russia Blog translates Russian police documents targeting ethnic Georgians.
Tajikistan: Blocked Websites
Alexander Sadikov reports on the Tajik government's decision to block access to certain “harmful” foreign websites that criticize the government, a move, Sadikov says, that indicates the government's determination to extend control over all facets of life in Tajikistan.
India: No donut for Orkut
India Uncut has a post on the possible chasing of Orkut in India because of a community that appears to hate India. “Let me put a question to you: does anyone get harmed in any way if some jokers show a burning Indian flag? Does anyone get harmed in any...
Russia: Anna Politkovskaya's Murder
Vilhelm Konnander writes about Anna Politkovskaya murder and Vladimir Putin's silence: “The fact remains: When Russia's “first journalist” is silenced, Russia's “first person” stays silent. No word from Putin, no word from the Kremlin when the freedom of the press is trampled on by brutal suppression. The tacit message thus...
China and Taiwan: media star map
ESWN translates an articles written by Chang Shi-kuo on the transition of Chinese media as represented by a star map.
Russia: Anna Politkovskaya's Murder
Anna Politkovskaya, a Russian journalist famous for her critical coverage of Chechnya and Vladimir Putin's policies, was shot to death in Moscow Saturday. Russian-language blogs are awash in speculation on who might be behind the murder. Anton Nossik (LJ user dolboeb, aka “the Guru of Russian Internet“) points (RUS) at...
China: Fifty-three things you may not know
As if learning Chinese wasn't hard enough, did you know that all bloggers in China are security encryption experts? ‘An effective way to visit Wikipedia’ [zh]—which is blocked in China—from Bokee blogger KangKang: 现在，维基媒体提供了通过HTTPS协议安全上维基网站的方法。使用下面的连接： Wikimedia now offers a way to safely access Wiki websites via HTTPS. Use the following links:...
Russia, Georgia: Crisis Continues
As the confrontation between Georgia and Russia continues, so does the discussion of it in the Russian blogosphere. Below are some of the exchanges, translated from Russian. LJ user plushev writes: I don't even remember when nearly everyone was writing on one subject. Beslan, perhaps. Was there anything like this...
Caucasus & Central Asia: Press Freedom
At neweurasia, Neil rounds up news on press freedom from all over the Caucasus and Central Asia.
Blogging Tunisia: whisper!
Roughly a year ago, the Tunisian weekly newspaper, Tunis Hebdo has published an article about the Tunisian Blogs [Fr] in which the author, Zouhour Harbaoui, shaped a frivolous image of the Tunisian Blogs as a matter of all and nothing. The reactions of the bloggers, whether on Tunis Hebdo online...
Serbia: Debate on Media Depiction of Kosovo Children
B92 news have reported on the journalist association's reaction to the alleged mistreatment of children from Kosovo and Metohia (in further text K&M) during a talk show on national TV. Independent Association of Journalists of Serbia (NUNS) claims that the so-called public service TV tried to manipulate citizens in a...
Russia: 13 Years Ago
Sean's Russia Blog marks the 13th anniversary of “Boris Yeltsin’s military suppression of the Supreme Soviet”: “Despite what anyone says about Putin, even poor Russians prefer Russia now than what it was when Yeltsin was lobbing shells at the White House. Plus Putin has made it acceptable to appreciate the...
Voices from Kazakhstan
After a break in voicing the Kazakh bloggers, caused by neweurasia team doing outreach in Central Asia, we present you the newest roundup of online conversations in Kazakhstan. Several major news attracted media attention to Kazakhstan recently: the President of the country Nazarbayev visited the White House, Sasha Baron Cohen...
Hong Kong: Flash mob rape and disney bomb threat
A 42 years old man's Internet messages inviting others to join him in a “flash mob rape” has resulted in Hong Kong's first conviction for outraging public decency through expressions on the world wide Web on September 20 and sentenced to 160 hours of community service yesterday (October 4). Another...
China: Media literacy, meetings, Macau, memories and mooncakes
Do Chinese police see bloggers as some sort of criminal element? Blogging undisturbed nearly requires a mastermind these days, and it's getting worse. Liu Di (刘荻), aka Stainless Steel Mouse, imprisoned in late 2002 for over a year for writings she'd posted on the internet, updated her blog late last...
Kurdistance
Welcome back to this week's edition of Kurdistance! Hiwa gives us a wonderful link to a amatur video about the Kurdish community in Leeds, UK that is featured on the BBC. Hiwa also reports on an incident that has made headlines in Turkey. At a recent NATO seminar, an American...
Cameroon: Government Clamps Down on Separatist Activities
On the anniversary of the reunification of Anglophone and Francophone Cameroon, Fojrega (Fr) remembers Daniel Fonkoua, a member of the SCNC (an anglophone separatist group), who disappeared last September after state security forces raided his house. This anniversary, anglophone separatists hoisted their flag in several villages in the English-speaking region...
Iraq: Rare testimony of abuse by the Iraqi Security Forces
Torture in Iraq, says the UN, is “out of control”, and “worse than it has been in the times of Saddam Hussein”. So it was especially timely for Brian Conley at Alive In Baghdad to e-mail us to say that he had an interview with a man who claims to...
The Kannada Context: “Gandhigiri”, nADahabba and Everything Else
Gandhi Jayanti (Gandhi‘s Birth Anniversary) was observed yesterday in India and elsewhere. It was celebrated the most by the electronic media, of course. What was different this time, however, was that, a lot of them talked about “Gandhigiri”, the new phrase, and supposedly the newly revived way of life. Curiously,...
Albania: Ismail Kadare's Novel
Wu Wei reads Ismail Kadare's novel, The Successor: “The Successor is about the ways totalitarian leaders keep their colleagues in check, by invoking the good of the Party. Or perhaps the ways in which the colleagues keep themselves in check by their own fear, having given their leader all power.”
