We have an opportunity to travel to Cuba and interview Cuban bloggers for a possible presentation on the Washington Post‘s PostGlobal series. Please help us get there and get the information on these bloggers to the wider world. They’ve blossomed over the last year but have recently begun to see blocks and shut-downs. They occupy an interesting place in the history of their country and its current possible transitions.

If you’re interested in helping defray some of the costs of this undertaking, please visit our CPB Facebook Causes page to donate or contact us directly at committeetoprotectbloggers at gmail dot com.

According to Amir Mizroch, news editor of the Jerusalem Post, on his blog, Forecast Highs, an Israeli soldier was arrested for uploading a photo onto Facebook

A soldier serving in the IDF’s elite 8200 military intelligence unit was sentenced to 19 days in prison on Wednesday for uploading a picture onto the Facebook social networking site.

The IDF would not comment on the exact nature of the photograph, but said the punishment was in proportion to the committed offense. Military sources said an IDF directive prohibits photography on bases without official approval.

The sources said the soldier in question would be punished for taking pictures on a military base without permission . . .

Last week, The Jerusalem Post publicized the fact that a special unit inside the IDF was working to remove hundreds of classified photos, documents and messages available on Facebook and that the Defense Ministry and the IDF, had issued a stern warning to anyone caught uploading this type of content onto the Internet.

The Post probe revealed that soldiers had posted pictures of advanced weapons training, interiors and exteriors of bases – including the equipment inside them – and troop exercises and locations onto Facebook.

The Defense Ministry said that anyone caught posting classified material onto the Internet would be court-martialed. The ministry said it had no information indicating that foreign intelligence services and terrorist groups were making use of the plethora of photographs and information on Facebook to gather intelligence on the IDF, but sources within the IDF confirmed that the army was racing against time to track down and remove classified information from the popular site

Sponsors have introduced a bill into the United States House of Representatives, called H.R. 5699, the “Blogger Protection Act of 2008.” Its purpose is “(t)o amend the Federal Election Campaign Act of 1971 to protect uncompensated Internet activity by individuals from treatment as a contribution or expenditure under the Act, and for other purposes.”

According to Maggie Thurber:

The bill was introduced by Rep. Jeb Hensarling, Chairman of the Republican Study Committee, to protect bloggers from FEC regulations and keep them safe from reporting to the FEC. Since a majority of bloggers are not paid for their netroots activism on behalf of a candidate, this bill will protect bloggers from keeping track of expenditures, equipment and having to report their activity to the FEC, whenever they write about a candidate.

Saudi blogger Fouad Al Farhan has been released from prison and is resting at home with his family, according to a message from the Free Fouad group.

Fouad, called the father of Saudi blogging, was arrested on December 11 in Jeddah and held in solitary confinement with no charges and only one family visit.

Confirmed by Saudi Jeans.

According to the Bangkok Post, Vietnamese authorities have arrested blogger Nguyen Van Hai.

The newspaper Vietnam Law reported that Ho Chi Minh City police Tuesday arrested Nguyen Van Hai, who blogs under the name Dieu Cay, on charges of tax evasion. The paper said police had searched Hai’s house Monday and found evidence that he and his ex-wife had understated their monthly rent to avoid paying the full value-added tax.

Hai is a member of a group of bloggers known as the Union of Independent Journalists. Other members of the group have called for protests along the torch’s route when it is carried through Ho Chi Minh City.

Members of the group were also involved in organising demonstrations in December and January against Chinese moves to assert sovereignty over the Spratly and Paracel Islands, which Vietnam also claims.

Vietnamese democracy activists, who requested anonymity, said that Hai had actually been detained on Monday in the resort town of Dalat, 300 kilometres north-west of Ho Chi Minh City, and escorted back to Ho Chi Minh City to facilitate the search of his house.

On his blog, Hai had featured articles on protests against the torch in other cities around the world, and others critical of China’s policies in Tibet and the Spratlys and opposing the torch’s relay through Vietnam.

On Sunday, Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung held a meeting with Ho Chi Minh City officials to review their plans for preventing demonstrations during the torch relay.

Here’s a report on our two week Flood the Jail with Mail campaign for Kareem, the imprisoned Egyptian blogger. The report is via mail from Esra’a, from FreeKareem.

I think even if we had 1 letter, it would be a success for us. We had around 60 confirmed letters from around the world, and we spoke with a few campuses in the USA and they are getting ready to hold small events where they collect letters for Kareem, so they can send them all together in a big envelope. We aim to collect at least 30 letters per event. We did the same thing at my college here and we managed to collect around 20 – postcards, letters, pictures. I think Kareem would like it to see things personalized. We are hoping that he will write back confirming to us that he received all these letters.

Ideally people would be sending letters throughout the year, so no amount of days is ever enough. We just specified a date because Curt rightly noted that people would just be saying things like “oh, I’d just send it next month, or the month after that,” and eventually forget. But if they think they have to send it within a specific date, then they will do it much quicker. We hope to be doing this a few times a year to make sure Kareem is being remembered and that people continue making an effort to communicate with him.

And here’s FreeKareem’s update post.

On Monday, April 21, was the official deadline for our letter campaign “Flood the Jail with Mail“. So far, we had about 60 confirmed letters from around the world, but we are assured that it’s not over Рsome people are getting ready to hold small events where they collect letters for Kareem, so they can send them all together in a big envelope. Our aim is to collect at least 30 letters per event.

People have sent Kareem letters, postcards, pictures, books, etc. We are hoping that he will write back confirming to us that he received all these letters, or at least most of them. But even if the campaign is over now you can continue writing to Kareem. He is always happy to receive letters from his friends and supporters.

We also have in mind to create another campaign of this sort during the end of the summer in August, and in between, we’d have other kinds of campaigns to keep people aware of Kareem. If anyone wants to help out, they should contact editor@freekareem.org and we’d be happy to accept any suggestions or help.

I’d like to sincerely thank all the CPB members who wrote Kareem. I’d also like to second Esra’a's encouragement to go ahead and write, or write again, whether the campaign is at an end or not.

Update:

RSF now reports that Esraa Abdel Fattah Ahmed has also been released.

***

From RSF:

Mahamed El Sharkawi, a blogger who was arrested on 5 April while distributing leaflets urging Cairo residents to go on strike in support of the 6 April protest against food price hikes, was released yesterday from a prison in the Cairo district of Marg where he had been on strike for the past four days. Sharkawi heads the Cairo-based publishing house Malameh, which was raided by a moral decency police unit on 16 April for publishing a comic book called “Metro” written in vernacular Arabic. Copies of the book were seized on the grounds that it harmed “public manners.”

Fellow blogger Esraa Abdel Fattah Ahmed, who launched the “6 April” group on the social networking website Facebook, is still detained although the prosecutor general ordered her release on 17 April. Her group had more than 65,000 members.

A third blogger, Kareem El Beheiri, who was one of the workers arrested during protests in Mahalla (north of Cairo) on 7 April, is also still held. Well-known because of his blog, he has been fired from his job in a Mahalla textile plant without any grounds being given.