· September, 2009

Stories about Advocacy from September, 2009

Egypt: Another journalist to be deported

  29 September 2009

To continue the series of harassing or deporting journalists in Egypt, like Travis Randall, Philip Rizk and Wael Abbas; Per Bjorklund, a Swedish journalist and blogger has been detained in Cairo airport upon his arrival. He’s been stopped by security and is to be deported back to Prague without an...

Egypt: Bargaining Bloggers to stop opposing the Government

  29 September 2009

“You will be behind the sun” was the expression used by the Dean Abdul Hadi, General Inspector of State Security at Fayoum (Egyptian Province), while he was interrogating the Egyptian blogger AbdelRahman Fares last Friday, 25 September, 2009, who blogs at Lesany Hoa elKalm (My Pen Is My Tongue). Hours...

Yemen: Editor of an opposition website kidnapped

  21 September 2009

On the night of Friday, September 18th, 2009, the Yemeni Editor of the opposition Socialist Party's website, Al Eshteraki, Mohammed al Maqaleh has been kidnapped in the capital Sana'a by security forces. According to eyewitness reports cited by the International Federation of Journalists : five gun wielding masked men in...

The Power of 140 Characters: Twitter in the Middle East

  21 September 2009

The massive, sustained protests in Iran this past month against the regime’s apparent falsification of the presidential election results was enabled by widespread employment of new communication technologies. Among them is Twitter, the micro-blog which enables its users to distribute short messages of no more than 140 characters (‘Tweets’) via...

Syria: Blogger Kareem Arbaji Sentenced to Three Years in prison

  19 September 2009

On September 13, 2009, the Syrian State Security Supreme Court sentenced the young blogger Kareem Arbaji to three-years prison for “publishing mendacious information liable to weaken the nation’s morale,” under article #286 of the Syrian penal code. The thirty- one years old economics graduate, Kareem Arbaji, has been detained for...

Once again, Syria bans Facebook

  17 September 2009

Editor's Note: Facebook has been blocked in Syria consistently for the past two years; therefore, the statement that a ban will be “reintroduced” is incorrect. The linked article from  ‘Al Quds Al Arabi’,” which has since been removed, did not actually claim that Syria planned to reintroduce a ban.  The...

Tunisia: Journalist and blogger Abdallah Zouari rearrested

  17 September 2009

Tunisian blogger and former political prisoner Abdallah Zouari has been arrested yesterday, 15 September 2009 by plainclothes agents in the southern city of Zarzis. During the 8 hours of arrest, blogger Abdallah Zouari was asked to disclose the passwords of his email accounts and interrogated about his most recent report...

Vietnam: Bloggers arrested for criticizing China

  8 September 2009

Vietnam is continuing its crackdown against bloggers.Early morning on September 3rd blogger Nguyen Nhu Quynh, asleep with her young child was arrested by armed security personnel.In July blogger Nguyen Tien Trung was arrested for his free speech activism. According to Reporters Sans Frontières “The Vietnamese authorities have arrested another blogger,...

Danish-Egyptian Biometric ID-Card Scrutinized Before Take-off

  7 September 2009

Danish aid is advanzing a joint venture that will sell sofisticated biometric identification technology to the Egyptian Ministry of Communication. NGO questions lack of oversight and evaluation of whether the technology can be used to advance surveillance.

The Other Voice: Women in the Cyberspace Discourse in the Middle East and Islamic World

  7 September 2009

http://www.dayan.org/Women%20and%20the%20internet.pdf Tel Aviv Notes, Dayan Center, Tel Aviv University – 30 August 2009. In recent years, the Internet has become a swift and accessible means of communication, thanks in part to the proliferation of personal blogs and, even more recently, micro-blogs (through “Twitter”).  Users are now able to transmit short...

Anonymous Blogging guide now available in Arabic

  6 September 2009

Download PDF The Anonymous Blogging with WordPress and Tor guide is now available in Arabic thanks to this translation by Yazan Badran and Mohammad Al abdallah. The guide outlines several methods of protecting one’s identity in order to avoid retaliation and can considerably reduce the risks that a blogger’s identity...

Liberia government sites are off, and nobody cares

1 September 2009

On the night of August 24th. S.W.A.T hackers (probably Iranian team) penetrated 19 governmental web sites including almost all ministries. Most of the sites were down for maintenance for almost three days. Almost all government sites in Liberia fell for days. But when gargbage covers the streets of the capital...