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.

From the Economist’s article on Syria called “Red lines that cannot be crossed,” published on July 24th.

In May Tareq Bayassi, aged 24, was jailed for three years for publishing “false news” on the internet after being detained without trial for almost a year. “The real reason for the sentence,” says another lobby, the online Committee to Protect Bloggers, “was his having posted an article on the shortcomings of the Syrian secret service.”

From ReadWriteWeb’s article, “BlogHer: Who Are Your Favorite Women Bloggers?” published July 18.

Curt Hopkins is the founding editor of The Committee to Protect Bloggers, a blog and organization dedicated to protecting bloggers around the world from imprisonment, censorship and other offenses at the hand of authoritarian governments. Curt didn’t hesitate for a moment before pointing us toward the following bloggers.

Esra’a Al Shafei is a 21 year old blogger from the Kingdom of Bahrain. She writes at Mideast Youth and at FreeKareem.org, a blog dedicated to agitating for the freedom of imprisoned Egyptian blogger Abdul Kareem Nabeel Suleiman.

Israel-Canadian freelance writer Lisa Goldman writes about Israel and media.

Sokari Ekine is the founder of Black Looks, a blog about Africa, women in Africa and a whole host of other topics.

From the Yemen Times’s article, “Yemeni youth are crazy for Facebook,” published July 17.

Some countries like Syria and Iran have blocked Facebook completely, since they feel the site is a threat to national security. The Syrian government claims that the ban is due to the open nature of the site, which they think promoted attacks on authorities, along with Israeli infiltration of Syrian social networks. However, some human rights organizations, such as the U.S.-based Committee to Protect Bloggers, [say] that it’s simply another way for the Syrian government to control their citizens and quell dissent; criticizing the government is punishable by imprisonment. Yet there are a still groups and networks with thousands of Iranian and Syrian users. Users are finding their own ways to access Facebook, which is apparently as addictive for them as it is for the thousands of Yemenis who log on to the site.

From ars technica’s article on Iran’s death penalty for bloggers, “Iran considering banning filthy bloggers from meatspace,” published July 7.

Here, circumventing censorship could result in being kicked and banned from #life. The Committee to Protect Bloggers describes Iran as “among the worst offenders in terms of harassing, arresting and imprisoning bloggers,” so poking the fate bear in this case may not be in bloggers’ best interest.

From ReadWriteWeb’s article, “Iran Parliament to Debate Death Penalty for Bloggers,” published July 4.

Blogging is wildly popular in Iran, where a new generation of young people frequently challenge the old, hyper-conservative religious government. The Committe to Protect Bloggers says that Iran is “among the worst offenders in terms of harassing, arresting and imprisoning bloggers, as well as students.” You can see the group’s extensive coverage of Iranian cyber-censorship and harrasment of bloggers here. The Iranian government has blocked access to Facebook, Yahoo! and Flickr, among other sites.

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Jose & Ziva from “Cubanology’s Speak Your Mind,” a show on BlogTalkRadio, will be interviewing me today, Saturday, at 1:00 p.m. (PST). You can listen to Speak Your Mind live or replay after the fact. “Cubanology’s Speak Your Mind” focuses on Cuban issues but this time will be talking about freedom for bloggers worldwide.

Is it helpful to include arrests like those of Fatah, McClellan, and Aljughaifi in the WIA survey?  I’d argue no.  While it is commendable to analyze the efforts of governments around the world to muzzle bloggers, it is the repression of free speech that is the concern.  By including the arrests of those who happen to be bloggers in their count, the WIA researchers diminish the impact of their report, because they blur the value of that which they mean to defend.

He may be right. Our feelings have always been that, short of arrests for criminal activities such as violence and assault (and child pornography, certainly), we’ll cover threats to bloggers and threatened bloggers and not restrict it to people who were arrested for their blogging. For one thing, it is very difficult sometimes to distinguish the “crimes” bloggers who’ve been arrested have been charged with. What a tyrannous government claims as its motivation and what its real motivations are are quite different.

Update: Further press mentions of the Committee’s efforts and links to its work include the following.

Webb Alert
ReadWriteWeb
The Guardian’s News Blog