Stories about Interviews
China: Netizen Party announced
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...
Yemen blocks independent news websites
Numerous Yemeni websites have been blocked recently by government-controlled ISPs. Among them is the popular YemenPortal (English version of the site here), Yemen’s first multi-source news crawler and search engine, which extracts headlines from news sites that are being blocked by the authorities. YemenPortal is inviting Yemeni internet users to...
Morocco: Stop Internet Censorship!
In March of 2006, Livejournal, the popular blogging site, was blocked by the state-controlled telecommunications provider Maroc Telecom (a subsidiary of Vivendi International), depriving Moroccan citizens of access to the roughly 2 million blogs the service hosts. On May 25, 2007, Maroc Telecom blocked access to YouTube for few days....
Belarus: Give Lukashenko his LuNet!
When the Belarusian activist Dzianis Dzianisau was detained for nearly two months on charges of “taking part in manifestations which disturb public order”, the Belarusian blogsphere successfully organized an online (and offline) campaign to raise the bail (15.500.000 Belarusian roubles or $7,300) and got the young political prisoner out...
Part Two: Defending online free speech and environmental rights in Bulgaria
In Part One of this article, I outlined recent threats to the Bulgarian environment and the vibrant web-led protest movement that developed in response. In this article I speak to Milena Bokova, BlueLink Information Network executive director, who talks about the intimidation against her colleague, blogger Michel Bozgounov, the threats...
“Beat the Censors!”, a gift of freedom for Thai Internet users
(Photo Credit – sivanelle: Anti-censorship protestors gathered outside Pantip Plaza, a popular IT mall. June 9th, 2007 ) To date, Thailand’s ICT Minister, Dr Sitthichai Pookaiyaudom, has not kept his promise to unblock the popular video-sharing site, YouTube. YouTube, which is owned by Google, was blocked by the Thai government...
Fijian Freedom bloggers and the military junta
It seems that the persecution faced by the anti-military Fijian Freedom Bloggers – who are using blogs to protest against the coup of December 5th, 2006- has subsided following a decision by the Fiji Military Forces (FMF) to stop hunting for anti-military bloggers and abandon its efforts to block the...
Abdel-Monem Mahmoud: the Egyptian totalitarian regime is the problem
As I promised in my last article “Online Freedom for All: Some cases worth supporting”, I’m publishing here the translation of the interview I did with the jailed Egyptian blogger and journalist Abdel-Monem Mahmoud at the 3rd annual Al Jazeera Forum in Doha, Qatar, two weeks before Monem’s arrest. Monem...
Part Two: Inside the school of the Egyptian blogosphere
Source: original image from Baheyya (photoshopped), text in Arabic from Misr Digital This post is the second in a two-part series on Egypt's blogosphere in 2007. Read part one here. In order to better understand today's highly organized Egyptian blogosphere and how bloggers perceive their role in this new, turbulent phase...
Pakistan: Online freedom of speech as collateral damage?
This flash animation is converted from the Powerpoint Presentation made by Dr Awab Alvi for “The Battle for the Internet.” conference (His presentation can be viewed here-original file .ppt) One year ago, on the 27th of February 2006, when the Danish cartoons controversy exploded, spawning waves of protest, anger...
Iran: Flickr users vs. The State
One of the censorship nightmares experienced by web-connected citizens living in countries engaging in Internet filtering is to find out that they can no longer access their favorite sites. Unfortunately, this is what is happening to the Flickr.com community in Iran and in the United Arab Emirates, where, a few...
