Committee to Protect Bloggers » Citizen journalists

Citizen Journalist placed under ‘Town Arrest’

Victor — Thu, 14 Aug 2008 14:10:56 +0000

Chinese citizen journalist, Zhou ‘Zuola’ Shuguang was today placed under a kind of ‘town arrest’ by Chinese authorities. Apparently he was able to tweet the incident, ~~oh the joys of twitter~~, and his followers quickly got the word out.

The authorities seemed to be uncomfortable with his intention to travel to Beijing and blog about the olympic games. Zuola knew he would be visited by the authorities today and had tweeted about to let everybody know.

Aware of the rucus he was causing he decided against going to Beijing, and was at home when the ….’government people’ came for him. He was detained for a bout an hour and released, and informed that he would not be allowed to leave his hometown for the time being, and told that if he left he would be brought back.

Global Voices writes that this is the second time Zuola has be threatened for his blogging.

Partnering with Demotix

Curt — Wed, 30 Jul 2008 20:56:32 +0000

The Committee to Protect Bloggers is lending its expertise to a new citizen journalism site, Demotix. The thing that makes Demotix unique is its focus on free speech and safe communications. If you’re interested in reporting on your corner of the world, and would like to get paid for it, Demotix is worth checking out.

(Oh, and I should add, CPB is not receiving any money from Demotix, nor vice versa for that matter. Just a couple of organizations with crushes on each other.)

Chinese Citizen Journalist Murdered

Curt — Thu, 10 Jan 2008 21:27:17 +0000

According to the Guardian, (via From the Frontlines), “24 residents of Tianmen, a city in central China’s Hubei province, have been detained after Wei Wenhua, the general manager of a company owned by the local water resources bureau, was pulled out of his car and savagely beaten” by a mob. Wei had filmed a gang fight between the villagers and village officials with his cell phone. The village officials were backed by a number of “chengguan,” a kind of enforcer. It doesn’t take a lot of imagination to figure out which kind. It’s unclear whether it were just the chengguan who took 10 minutes to beat the man to death.

***

Ray reminds us of a previous case of journalist attack by villagers. This one turned out to be more complicated than at first blush. The situation was different than this, in that it was a possibly inexperienced British reporter. This story was initially covered by Chinese journalists. I had also had an experience related to me personally of a mob attack against a Western journalist by that journalist. So, I don’t know if we can call it a trend, but it’s not an isolated event either.

Burmese Bloggers Go Dark, Pt. 3

Curt — Fri, 05 Oct 2007 16:54:06 +0000

I spoke with Seth Mydans, a reporter for the New York Times who’s been covering Burma. When he looked at Niknayman’s Cbox account, he noted that a great deal of the material posted in the last days indicated access to foreign media, which was unlikely (though not impossible) from inside the country. Even allowing for the fact that there are one or two hundred people accessing the site at any one time (and some of those, possibly the majority, no doubt outside Burma), there were enough of what looked like eyewitness postings to convince me some of them were done inside the country.

I then spoke with Preetam Rai , a blogger in SE Asia and contributor to Global Voices. Here’s his two cents.

From what I have heard, Myanmar has become like a intranet, people are still able to access to internally hosted sites but are not able to go outside. I am sure there is some outside access available but maybe limited to government officials and international companies. I have noticed that bloggers inside Myanmar who used to post non-political (There were some fashion, tech and korean tv drama themed blogs) content have also gone silent.

I thought that nik guy was outside Myanmar and he was collating information from all over.

What is happening though is that Burmese outside are able to call people inside and get some info. Some Myanmar bloggers are posting this information. However it is also getting harder to verify stuff. I think even if there were bloggers inside Myanmar they would not go near any cybercafe to report stuff about the protests.

My thought was that perhaps if not posting directly, people inside the country were texting to others who could post for them.

Well, at this point, I just don’t know what to think, but thought I should let you all know what I’ve discovered, even if it is, at this point, only suspicions. If anyone has any clarifying information, do please let us know. And thanks to all of you who took part in Free Burma day yesterday.

Burma News Sources

Curt — Mon, 01 Oct 2007 16:48:30 +0000

The Guardian’s News Blog had a good list of sources for Burmese news. I’ll try to augment.

Niknayman’s cbox (Blogger in Burma, and associates)
Soneseayar (Burmese blogger outside the country; also has a cbox)
Irrawaddy (Burmese news site in Thailand)
Mizzima (Burmese news agency with offices in India and Thailand)
Ko-Htike (Burmese blogger in London)

The Cult of the Citizen

Curt — Sat, 29 Sep 2007 13:06:43 +0000

Burma has become an object lesson for the power of blogging and, sadly, for the vulnerability of bloggers to the actions of a determined government. Protests began in August and, due to the lack of both independent domestic press and the presence of many international journalists, bloggers did the heavy-lifting in getting the news out.

Burma-based bloggers followed every turn of news in the streets and provided traditional news organizations with information and media they would not otherwise have had.

When the crackdown began last week, and those bloggers’ access was blocked, like Niknayman , or hijacked and deleted, like Sone Se Yar, external Burmese news sites such as Mizzima and Irrawaddy, as well as exile bloggers like Ko-Htike continued to post news and photos gotten from citizens inside via email, cell phone calls and text messages.

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