Guo Quan

Guo Quan was arrested yesterday, 13th November by the Chinese authorities, for inciting subversion.  This stems from some of his blog posts where he exhorts the Chinese government to embrace democracy.  He is currently being held at an Nanjing prison.

Gou had previously been arrested on 18th May when he was held for 10 days, during which he was interrogated and asked to name other dissidents, which he did not.  The ruling Communist party also tried to break down a network he had started from victims of the eartquake that recently struck China.

Guo has been under house arrest since February, after calling for  the creation of a Chinese Netizen Party to fight the online censorship in China.  The Chinese government in cahoots with the search engine Google, has ensured that any search for his name in the Chinese language version yields no results, which led Guo on 4th Febrauary to state that he intended to sue Google.

Since being fired from his job, as a philosophy professor at Nanjing University, Guo has been posting pro-democracy open letters on his blog

CPB is gutted to learn that Nay Phone Latt, has been sentenced to 20 years and six months in prison by the Burmese authorities. He was convicted of contravening a public law act by posting a cartoon of the head of the Burmese military junta on his blog. His colleague, Thin July Kyaw, was sentenced to two years imprisonment while two weeks ago three defence lawyers were sentenced to between four to six months in prison.

In September 2007 during the uprising, Nay Phone Latt’s blogs provided the world with information about what was going on in Burma as there was a dearth of information due a blackout of news coming out of the country by the military junta.

At the moment the courts are jam packed with activists being tried daily in processes that do not even come close to being mistaken for justice.

H/T to irrawady for informing us.

According to Aljazeera, the High Court in the state of Selangor, ruled that Raja Petra was detained illegally by the Malaysian authorities, with The Security Minister acting beyond his powers by having him detained under the Internal Security Act.  He was due to be formally released after being produced in court later today, Friday.

While this is a good thing Raja also faces another sedition charge in relation to a case filed against him over a story linking the Deputy Prime Minister with the killing and disappearance of a ladyin October 2006.

Blacklooks tells us that Elendu is now free, and is receiving treatment.  Here at CPB we are in solidarity with Elendu and all Nigerian bloggers.

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Blacklooks reports that the Nigerian Blogger who’d been arrested has now been transferred, to the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, Nigeria’s anti-corruption agency. Now that he is in EFCC custody, Jonathan has reportedly been tortured. EFCC is supposed to deal with economic crimes and not repression of free speech. It looks like the Nigerian Government is trying to find something, anything to charge him with.

EFCC has denied him access to his lawyer and the Nigerian Human Rights Writers Assosciation says that, Elendu has been tortured and other information we are getting is that his health has deteriorated considerably, though it is not know if this is because of the torture or due a ‘hunger strike’ he said to be on.

Nigerian Curiosity from whom we have been getting updates has organized to have Friday October 31st as ‘Free Jonathan Elendu Day’ The essence of the campaign is to try and generate as much awareness about the detention as possible. What you can do to help is to:
1. Title all blog posts on 31st October - ‘Free Jonathan Elendu Now’
2. On Facebook, title your status updates - ‘Free Jonathan Elendu Now’

So on Friday we here at CPB will be joining the campaign., and we urge you to join in.

Online commentator Raja Petra Raja Kamarudin, known for his anti-government views, was already in police custody and was served a detention order Monday night, said his lawyer Malik Imtiaz Sarwar.

The order was signed by Home Minister Syed Hamid Albar, who has said Raja Petra’s writings pose a threat to national security by creating racial tension.

Raja Petra has increasingly infuriated authorities by publishing numerous claims about alleged wrongdoings by government leaders on his popular site, Malaysia Today, which serves as his blog as well as a news portal. The government has denounced most of Raja Petra’s allegations as lies.

The laws under which Raja was arrested give the authorities the option of renewing the prison term once that initial two years is over.

We were a little optimistic that the Malaysia Cabinet decision to rescind the Malaysian Communication and Multimedia Commission (MCMC) to block Malaysia Today and all other blocked sites was a step in the right direction but the arrest of Raja Petra Kamaruddin now under the country’s tough internal security act (ISA), this is on top of the sedition and defamation charges he is facing.

According to Committee to Protect Journalists, blogger and human rights lawyer, Harris Ibrahim was also arrested for posting about Raja’s arrest.

ZDNet Asia writes

The opposition Democratic Action Party (DAP) condemned the arrest of Raja Petra and said the move “smacks of desperation” by the BN government.

Tony Pua, opposition member of parliament and economic advisor to the DAP secretary-general, said: “The government is flip-flopping and is seen as a headless chicken. They realized they did a stupid thing by banning Malaysia Today, and now they are compounding it by trying to ‘neutralize’ Raja Petra under the ISA.”

Pua reckoned that the action Raja Petra signaled the start of a crackdown not only on bloggers and Web site operators, but also on those deemed a threat to the ruling elite.

This has raised ire with Malaysia’s bloggers and opposition and we hope that the government realises it folly and ceases fighting its political wars on the internet and arresting critics.

We are monitoring this situation and we’ll give more updates as we get them.

This is due to a statement made on Bluestone’s blog referring to a malpractice case against Marina Tylo.

The Citizen Media Law Project sees the case as frivolous.

Unless I’m missing something, this looks like a purely frivolous case, perhaps a situation where sanctions against Tylo are appropriate. As explained in our legal guide [6], section 74 of the New York Civil Rights Law [7] codifies the fair report privilege [8]. Under the statute, speakers cannot be held liable for giving a “fair and true report of any judicial proceeding, legislative proceeding or other official proceeding.”

We will monitor the case and give you further updates.

Magomed was a prominent critic of Ingushetiya President, Murat Zyzikov who has criticized inushetiya.ru’s reporting and has brought a court case seeking to shut it down.  His lawyer is quoted saying that the police picked him up and shot him in the temple before dumping him near the hospital.

Zyzikov has been fighting an insurgency in Ingushetiya and has taken a hardline stance to any opposition.

The website is calling for supporters to rally and demonstrate to protest the killing, and we here fully support their cause.

CPB friend Antony Loewenstein sent us his new book, The Blogging Revolution. I’ll write it up here as soon as I’m done reading it. It covers blogging in repressive regimes. It has chapters on Iran, Egypt, Syria, Saudi Arabia, Cuba and China.

Knowing Antony, I imagine it will prove both literate and unique.

In their suit Gremach states that the blogger has been on a ‘hate campaign’ and wants Google to unmask the blogger going by the name, ‘Toxic Writer’.  Google in turn have taken down the blog and their Indian subsidiary claims it is not responsible for the Blogger.com service, which is also a subsidiary of Google.

Wired writes that the suit which was filed at Bombay High Court would have far reaching implications on how Google operates in India.

Seeing as Yahoo was all but willing to hand over its user’s information to the Chinese authorities we hope that Google & Co. will resist the urge to focus more on profits than free speech.