February, 2008

Stories from February, 2008

Morocco: No Justice for Fouad Mourtada

  25 February 2008

Is creating a Facebook profile of a famous entity a crime? Although it's been done to nearly every major celebrity (a quick search for “George W. Bush” garners over 500 results), when Fouad Mourtada chose to mimic Prince Moulay Rachid of Morocco, he was committing a serious crime. As Sami...

Pakistan: Partial Block of Youtube

  24 February 2008

The Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) has directed (see above) the country's ISPs to block access to the videos sharing website YouTube for allegedly featuring a blasphemous video.

Uzbekistan blocks Newsuz.com website

  21 February 2008

It has been reported that the Uzbek-language website Newsuz.com has been blocked in Uzbekistan. “After a series of critical publications on human rights issues, gas supply issues, and price growth, and also analytical publications on the recent elections, we began receiving letters with threats and demands to follow information posted...

Fouad's Week: Fouad will not be forgotten!

  14 February 2008

The Free Fouad campaign has organized and carried out “Fouad’s Week”, during which bloggers were invited to republish one of Fouad’s posts on their blogs and to embrace “We Are All Fouads” as a slogan. This week-long event marked two months since the dean of the Saudi bloggers, Fouad Alfarhan,...

Hong Kong netizens protest nude photo ‘white terror’

  10 February 2008

Eight people have now been arrested and two charged in Hong Kong in what many netizens are calling the “white terror,” police response to the Edison Chen sex photo scandal, explained by Police Commissioner Tang King Shing last weekend when he said possession of the photos alone is now illegal....

China: Netizen Party announced

  9 February 2008

From forcing the rescue of hundreds of brick kiln slave laborers last year and seeing it through long after local bodies gave up to being analytical piranhas when dealt obvious official lies, and numerous examples in between, it seems some netizens have realized their comparative advantage over local government authorities...

Syrian Bloggers Campaign to Free Fellow Blogger Tariq Biasi

  5 February 2008

It all started when one did: Ahmad published several entries concerning the detention of Tariq, the jailed Syrian blogger, but it is only when his blog was added on the SYPlanet aggregator that I had the chance to be aware of Tariq's situation. I reacted by contacting all the bloggers...