The latest issue on the stands

A piece I wrote for the new Independent World Report, entitled “Blogging beyond borders” was published over the weekend. While looking at the state of internet rights in Cuba and other Latin American countries, I wanted it to take a wider look at the state of internet rights worldwide. In spite of the efforts of Cuba, China, Iran, the UK’s digital economy law and Australia’s threats to heavily censor the web with its own draconian firewall, the InterWebs remain a borderless, wild frontier and focusing in regional situations makes less and less sense. When one government stifles access to it, the impact is felt by people in various parts of the globe who may be trying to get information in or out. Read the rest of this entry…

From CPJ we have very disheartening news, they report in their annual prison census, freelancers mostly online journalists and bloggers make up 45% of all journalists currently in prison.  China, Iran, Cuba, Eritrea and Burma re the top five jailers of journalism practitioners in world, with China holding the ignominious first position for the 11th year running.

They say in part…

The number of online journalists in prison continued a decade-long rise, CPJ’s census found. At least 68 bloggers, Web-based reporters, and online editors are imprisoned, constituting half of all journalists now in jail. Print reporters, editors, and photographers make up the next largest professional category, with 51 cases in 2009. Television and radio journalists and documentary filmmakers constitute the rest.

Here at CPB we have also tried our best to make know the importance of blogging and how it has come to affect how governments try to control withhold information from their citizens, the fact that more and more bloggers are being arrested is one we totally condemn, couple this with the fact that most have very little or no institutional support adds to an already precarious situation.

One not so pleasant example is China where of the 24 officially in prison at the moment, 22 are freelancers with almost all of the having been arrested and imprisoned because of blogging or publishing online.

We will strive to continue reporting, researching and writing on threats to online freedoms because at the end of the day, some bloggers can only rely on us to raise awareness on their plight.

“Going online in countries where internet censorship is common is rather like visiting a parallel universe run by the world’s strictest, most bigoted parents. Entire sites disappear without warning,” writes Gary Marshall at Techradar.com.

This article has some very good information for those wishing to know exactly what risks bloggers and other online content creators face in less open areas around the world. From Saudi Arabia, to Cuba to Iran, Tunisia, Burma, Belarus, it’s a good overall piece with some sound advice. These include using Picidae to turns websites into images, allowing you to read web pages without the text going into your cache or browser history; Freegate, which uses proxy servers to reroute traffic and Tor, which accesses sites through “virtual tunnels.”

Image source

On his Foreign Policy magazine, net.effect, Evgeny Morozov got his snark on, titling the post “Should we also make lists of the world’s ten worst places to be a vegetarian?” It was a response to the Committee to Protect Journalists’ slightly funky list of “10 Worst Countries to Be a Blogger.”

Hilarity notwithstanding, Morozov did make some good points.

The problem is that all too often these bloggers have other identities; some of them are prominent journalists, some are old-school activists ,and some are intellectuals. Blogs usually provide jthem with ust another platform for engaging in traditional activist campaigns; quite often, it’s not even the most effective platform at their disposal.

One example he gave was the Burmese blogger (take that, Evgeny!) Zarganar. In Burma, this man, who was sentenced to 59 years in jail, which was then lowered to 35, is much better known as a comedian and actor. But I outlined some possible criteria that make a person a blogger for the purposes of public discussion. I also offered an alterative view of Zarganar. This doesn’t disprove Moronov’s point that the media often latches onto the “blogger” title in its coverage of imprisonment, a point I myself have made before.

It’s fair to identify them as bloggers if either 1. their main mode, or one of their primary modes, of communication is via blog or 2. if their arrest was based all or in part on material they posted on their blog or 3. because their blog was identified as an amplifier that made them more dangerous to the arresting party.

Many of those, if not all, in the CPJ list, would qualify. There are plenty of examples of people who were arrested solely due to their blogs – like Omid Reza Mirsayafi or Omid Sheikhan – but more many blogging was either an important threat or the straw that broke the camel’s back.

Unfortunately, I suppose, material on people arrested by the Egyptians, Iranians, Chinese, or whomever else, are not often cut and dried. Even finding out whether an American was fired because of their blog is all but impossible. The information you can get, experience, common sense all unite with an uncomfortable lack of finality when examining cases of bloggers and other users of social media.

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Criteria can be useful. But I think it’s important to remember that our topography of the world is quite fluid. Depending on the criteria of the moment, we might recognize a person as “a woman,” “Hispanic,” “my wife,” “a driver” or “Senator (R), Delaware.” Wouldn’t it be hard to say this if person were more a Senator than a driver? I think it would depend on the instance of conversation or communication. As for Zarganar, perhaps the case could be made that he is much better known outside Burma as a blogger than as a comedian. I, for one, am utterly ignorant of his comedy.

The Committee to Protect Journalists (no relation) has released its list of 10 Worst Countries to Be a Blogger (via Frontline Club’s blog).

1. Burma
2. Iran
3. Syria
4. Cuba
5. Saudi Arabia
6. Vietnam
7. Tunisia
8. China
9. Turkmenistan
10. Egypt

We’d probably have a slightly different list, and certainly in a slightly different order. Egypt is arrest happy, and they love torture and rape in their jail. Iran is working diligently to pass China in overall repression and specifically against bloggers. No other country is working to enact a law that would make killing bloggers legal. Still, CPJ’s list is worth reading.

IPS News reports that Suwicha Thakhor, who was arrested on January 14, was sentenced on April 3 to ten years in prison.

On Apr. 3, the criminal court sentenced the 34-year-old father of three children to 10 years in jail for posting an image on the Internet that was deemed to have insulted the Thai royal family. Suwicha’s sentence – initially for the maximum of 20 years but reduced to half – has pushed this South-east Asian nation to join the ranks of countries where bloggers can be imprisoned for expressing their views, such as Thailand’s western neighbour, military-ruled Burma.

The verdict also saw the three judges who presided over this groundbreaking case take measures that went against the grain of an open trial, which is often the case in other criminal cases. Reporters present in the wooden panelled chamber were ordered not to take notes of the proceedings. The court also did not say how the defamatory photos were doctored. 

Read the rest of this entry…

New Motto: “We Were Just Kidding About That Article XIX Thing”

Today, the United Nations Human Rights Council voted to adopt a resolution to encourage member states to create laws that would punish speech critical of religion.

In case you didn’t catch that, the Human Rights Council is encouraging its members to punish speech critical of religion.

A host of countries around the world already imprison bloggers, and others, for such speech. The most high-profile example is Abdul Kareem Nabeel Suleiman, or Kareem Amer, the Egyptian blogger sentenced to four years in prison for criticizing Islam. Perhaps the fact that it took the UN two years to condemn that sentence but two weeks to approve this measure is not coincidental.

The measure “Deplores the use of the print, audio-visual and electronic media, including the Internet, and any other means to incite acts of violence, xenophobia or related intolerance and discrimination towards any religion, as well as targeting of religious symbols and venerated persons.”

Kareem was just the start. The UN is now giving his abusers legal cover and making a mockery of Article XIX.

Free speech is fantastically unpopular around the world. Although countries like Egypt, Iran, Burma and China may be the most egregious and flamboyant punishers of unfettered speech, it is nearly as unpopular in “Western” countries. That is, it is praised right up to the point where it offends someone, as though offense taken could be a sensible benchmark for allowing freedom of expression.

We have come to expect the patent-leather tinhorns and the religious torturers to dish out sentences based on laws like those the United Nations is encouraging, but let’s never forget that the grey little men in places like Brussels and DC, Ottawa and Canberra make them possible.