Universal Declaration of Human Rights
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Adopted and proclaimed by General Assembly resolution 217 A (III) of 10 December 1948
On December 10, 1948 the General Assembly of the United Nations adopted and proclaimed the Universal Declaration of Human Rights the full text of which appears in this space. Following this historic act the Assembly called upon all Member countries to publicize the text of the Declaration and "to cause it to be disseminated, displayed, read and expounded principally in schools and other educational institutions, without distinction based on the political status of countries or territories."
PREAMBLE
Whereas recognition of the inherent dignity and of the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family is the foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world,
Whereas disregard and contempt for human rights have resulted in barbarous acts which have outraged the conscience of mankind, and the advent of a world in which human beings shall enjoy freedom of speech and belief and freedom from fear and want has been proclaimed as the highest aspiration of the common people,
Whereas it is essential, if man is not to be compelled to have recourse, as a last resort, to rebellion against tyranny and oppression, that human rights should be protected by the rule of law,
Whereas it is essential to promote the development of friendly relations between nations,
Whereas the peoples of the United Nations have in the Charter reaffirmed their faith in fundamental human rights, in the dignity and worth of the human person and in the equal rights of men and women and have determined to promote social progress and better standards of life in larger freedom,
Whereas Member States have pledged themselves to achieve, in co-operation with the United Nations, the promotion of universal respect for and observance of human rights and fundamental freedoms,
Whereas a common understanding of these rights and freedoms is of the greatest importance for the full realization of this pledge,
Now, Therefore THE GENERAL ASSEMBLY proclaims THIS UNIVERSAL DECLARATION OF HUMAN RIGHTS as a common standard of achievement for all peoples and all nations, to the end that every individual and every organ of society, keeping this Declaration constantly in mind, shall strive by teaching and education to promote respect for these rights and freedoms and by progressive measures, national and international, to secure their universal and effective recognition and observance, both among the peoples of Member States themselves and among the peoples of territories under their jurisdiction.
Article 1.
All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights.They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.
Article 2.
Everyone is entitled to all the rights and freedoms set forth in this Declaration, without distinction of any kind, such as race, colour, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property, birth or other status. Furthermore, no distinction shall be made on the basis of the political, jurisdictional or international status of the country or territory to which a person belongs, whether it be independent, trust, non-self-governing or under any other limitation of sovereignty.
Article 3.
Everyone has the right to life, liberty and security of person.
Article 4.
No one shall be held in slavery or servitude; slavery and the slave trade shall be prohibited in all their forms.
Article 5.
No one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.
Article 6.
Everyone has the right to recognition everywhere as a person before the law.
Article 7.
All are equal before the law and are entitled without any discrimination to equal protection of the law. All are entitled to equal protection against any discrimination in violation of this Declaration and against any incitement to such discrimination.
Article 8.
Everyone has the right to an effective remedy by the competent national tribunals for acts violating the fundamental rights granted him by the constitution or by law.
Article 9.
No one shall be subjected to arbitrary arrest, detention or exile.
Article 10.
Everyone is entitled in full equality to a fair and public hearing by an independent and impartial tribunal, in the determination of his rights and obligations and of any criminal charge against him.
Article 11.
(1) Everyone charged with a penal offence has the right to be presumed innocent until proved guilty according to law in a public trial at which he has had all the guarantees necessary for his defence.
(2) No one shall be held guilty of any penal offence on account of any act or omission which did not constitute a penal offence, under national or international law, at the time when it was committed. Nor shall a heavier penalty be imposed than the one that was applicable at the time the penal offence was committed.
Article 12.
No one shall be subjected to arbitrary interference with his privacy, family, home or correspondence, nor to attacks upon his honour and reputation. Everyone has the right to the protection of the law against such interference or attacks.
Article 13.
(1) Everyone has the right to freedom of movement and residence within the borders of each state.
(2) Everyone has the right to leave any country, including his own, and to return to his country.
Article 14.
(1) Everyone has the right to seek and to enjoy in other countries asylum from persecution.
(2) This right may not be invoked in the case of prosecutions genuinely arising from non-political crimes or from acts contrary to the purposes and principles of the United Nations.
Article 15.
(1) Everyone has the right to a nationality.
(2) No one shall be arbitrarily deprived of his nationality nor denied the right to change his nationality.
Article 16.
(1) Men and women of full age, without any limitation due to race, nationality or religion, have the right to marry and to found a family. They are entitled to equal rights as to marriage, during marriage and at its dissolution.
(2) Marriage shall be entered into only with the free and full consent of the intending spouses.
(3) The family is the natural and fundamental group unit of society and is entitled to protection by society and the State.
Article 17.
(1) Everyone has the right to own property alone as well as in association with others.
(2) No one shall be arbitrarily deprived of his property.
Article 18.
Everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion; this right includes freedom to change his religion or belief, and freedom, either alone or in community with others and in public or private, to manifest his religion or belief in teaching, practice, worship and observance.
Article 19.
Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.
Article 20.
(1) Everyone has the right to freedom of peaceful assembly and association.
(2) No one may be compelled to belong to an association.
Article 21.
(1) Everyone has the right to take part in the government of his country, directly or through freely chosen representatives.
(2) Everyone has the right of equal access to public service in his country.
(3) The will of the people shall be the basis of the authority of government; this will shall be expressed in periodic and genuine elections which shall be by universal and equal suffrage and shall be held by secret vote or by equivalent free voting procedures.
Article 22.
Everyone, as a member of society, has the right to social security and is entitled to realization, through national effort and international co-operation and in accordance with the organization and resources of each State, of the economic, social and cultural rights indispensable for his dignity and the free development of his personality.
Article 23.
(1) Everyone has the right to work, to free choice of employment, to just and favourable conditions of work and to protection against unemployment.
(2) Everyone, without any discrimination, has the right to equal pay for equal work.
(3) Everyone who works has the right to just and favourable remuneration ensuring for himself and his family an existence worthy of human dignity, and supplemented, if necessary, by other means of social protection.
(4) Everyone has the right to form and to join trade unions for the protection of his interests.
Article 24.
Everyone has the right to rest and leisure, including reasonable limitation of working hours and periodic holidays with pay.
Article 25.
(1) Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services, and the right to security in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood, old age or other lack of livelihood in circumstances beyond his control.
(2) Motherhood and childhood are entitled to special care and assistance. All children, whether born in or out of wedlock, shall enjoy the same social protection.
Article 26.
(1) Everyone has the right to education. Education shall be free, at least in the elementary and fundamental stages. Elementary education shall be compulsory. Technical and professional education shall be made generally available and higher education shall be equally accessible to all on the basis of merit.
(2) Education shall be directed to the full development of the human personality and to the strengthening of respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms. It shall promote understanding, tolerance and friendship among all nations, racial or religious groups, and shall further the activities of the United Nations for the maintenance of peace.
(3) Parents have a prior right to choose the kind of education that shall be given to their children.
Article 27.
(1) Everyone has the right freely to participate in the cultural life of the community, to enjoy the arts and to share in scientific advancement and its benefits.
(2) Everyone has the right to the protection of the moral and material interests resulting from any scientific, literary or artistic production of which he is the author.
Article 28.
Everyone is entitled to a social and international order in which the rights and freedoms set forth in this Declaration can be fully realized.
Article 29.
(1) Everyone has duties to the community in which alone the free and full development of his personality is possible.
(2) In the exercise of his rights and freedoms, everyone shall be subject only to such limitations as are determined by law solely for the purpose of securing due recognition and respect for the rights and freedoms of others and of meeting the just requirements of morality, public order and the general welfare in a democratic society.
(3) These rights and freedoms may in no case be exercised contrary to the purposes and principles of the United Nations.
Article 30.
Nothing in this Declaration may be interpreted as implying for any State, group or person any right to engage in any activity or to perform any act aimed at the destruction of any of the rights and freedoms set forth herein.
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Friday, July 18, 2008
Tuesday, July 15, 2008
AZERBAIJAN : Rewriting the Law to Make Journalism a Crime
AZERBAIJAN : Rewriting the Law to Make Journalism a Crime
AZERBAIJAN : Ten-year sentence for an Editor
International PEN and International PEN's Writers in Prison Committee (WiPC) is seriously concerned about the 10-year sentence passed on June 24, 2008, at a closed trial against Novruzali Mamedov, 66, an ethnic Talysh, editor of the Talysh-minority-language newspaper (now-defunct) and head of the Talysh Cultural Center.
The Azerbaijani Court (Baku court) for Grave Crimes, presided by Judge Shakir Aleskerov, has put a full stop in the process of Novruzali Mamedov, head of the Talysh Cultural Centre and editor-in-chief of the "Tolyshi Sado" (Talysh's Voice) newspaper, and Elman Guliev, executive secretary of the newspaper, who were accused of treason against the State.
In spite of the fact that the verdict announcement had been appointed to 3:00 p.m. local time, the verdict was announced by the judge in the morning, without the presence of defendants' advocates and relatives, and also without journalists. The court has informed that both defendants were found guilty under Article 274 of the Criminal Code ("Treason against the State") and sentenced as follows: Mamedov to 10 years of imprisonment (without property confiscation) and Guliev - to 6 years of imprisonment (without property confiscation). Both will serve their terms at a strict custody colony. A report by Leila Yunus, director of the Institute of Peace and Democracy and other sources.
Mamedov was convicted of treason under Article 247 of Azerbaijan's penal code for what the prosecution called "distribution of Talysh nationalist ideas and attempts to destroy the foundations of the Azerbaijani state," the independent news agency Regnum reported. News reports said the case was based on an allegation that Mamedov had received money from Iran to publish the newspaper, but prosecutors have not publicly explained or commented on the charges.
Defense lawyer Ramiz Mamedov (no relation to the journalist) told the U.S.-government funded Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty that the case was fabricated.
Mamedov has been held since February 2007, initially on charges of "resisting law enforcement" and later on the treason charge, Yunus said. In the first 15 days in custody, Mamedov was held incommunicado at a Ministry of National Security detention center, with neither family members nor lawyers able to visit him, according to news reports. Talyshi Sado stopped publishing after the arrest.
Talyshi Sado was the twice-monthly newspaper of Azerbaijan's ethnic Talysh minority, a group of about 100,000 who live mainly in the southern part of the country, along the border with Iran. Published in the Talysh language, the paper had a circulation of around 1,000. In addition to being the editor, Mamedov headed the Institute of Linguistics of the Azerbaijan National Academy of Science, according to press reports and CPJ sources.
Ramiz Mamedov, Novruzali Mamedov's advocate, has informed the "Caucasian Knot"
correspondent that, according to the legislation, the verdict should be announced publicly. He treated "the secret verdict announcement to be another proof of the forged character of the case."
"We condemn the heavy prison sentence handed to Novruzali Mamedov after a closed trial in the absence of defense counsel," CPJ Europe and Central Asia Program Coordinator Nina Ognianova said. "Authorities should make evidence against Mamedov public, and Azerbaijan should work to remedy, not aggravate, its record of jailing journalists on trumped-up charges."
PEN calls for details of the evidence used to convict Mamedov to be made public and for concerns that he is being held in violation of his rights to freedom of expression and association to be addressed.
BACKGROUND INFORMATION
The Talysh minority, primarily Shia Muslim, is mainly located in southeastern Azerbaijan. In 1993, in the middle of political turmoil in the country, the minority claimed self-determination under the leadership of the Talysh National Movement. Their autonomy claim did not reach public support and was suppressed. It is believed that the movement remains active. For more on the Talysh
see http://www.azerb.com/az-talyshstan.html
The Talysh-Mughan Autonomous Republic (also known as Talyshstan) was a short-lived
self-proclaimed autonomous republic in Azerbaijan, that lasted from June to August 1993, base on the self determination claims of the Talysh people.
It was located in extreme southeastern Azerbaijan, envisaging to consist in the 6 administrative districts of Azerbaijan around the regional capital city Lankaran: Lankaran, Lankaran rayon, Lerik, Astara, Masally and Yardymli. Historically the area had been a khanate, one of 15 historic Azerbaijani khanates.
The autonomous republic was proclaimed amid political turmoil in Azerbaijan, with the tacit support from Russia. In June 1993 a military rebellion against president Abulfaz Elchibey broke out under the leadership of Colonel Surat Huseynov. Colonel Alikram Hummatov (Alikram Gumbatov), the leader of the Talysh nationalists, seized power in the southern part of Azerbaijan and proclaimed the new republic in Lankaran, escalating violence. However, as the situation settled and Heydar Aliyev rose to power in Azerbaijan, the Talysh-Mughan Autonomous Republic, which failed to gain any significant public support, was swiftly suppressed.
Hummatov was arrested and initially received death sentence which was subsequently commuted to life imprisonment. In 2004 he was pardoned and released from custody under pressure from the Council of Europe. He was allowed to emigrate to Europe after making a public promise not to engage in politics. Gumbatov was expected to be released due to the amnesty proclaimed on Azerbaijan's International Solidarity Day (December 31, 2000). However this never happened. Today, a Talysh National Movement is still active, their aspiration being the restructuring of the Talysh-Mughan Autonomous Republic. However, those who were involved in proclamation of the autonomy say they always envisaged the autonomous republic as a constituent part of Azerbaijan.
Please send appeals…..
• expressing serious concern about reports of the closed trial against editor Novruzali Mamedov, which, if confirmed, would be in violation of Articles 10 and 11 (a) of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights;
• calling for details of the evidence used to convict Mamedov to be made public;
• urging authorities to address concerns that Mamedov is being held in violation of his rights to freedom of expression and association.
Eynulla Fatullayev
International PEN and International PEN's Writers in Prison Committee (WiPC) is seriously concerned about the 10-year sentence passed on June 24, 2008, at a closed trial against Novruzali Mamedov, 66, an ethnic Talysh, editor of the Talysh-minority-language newspaper (now-defunct) and head of the Talysh Cultural Center.
The Azerbaijani Court (Baku court) for Grave Crimes, presided by Judge Shakir Aleskerov, has put a full stop in the process of Novruzali Mamedov, head of the Talysh Cultural Centre and editor-in-chief of the "Tolyshi Sado" (Talysh's Voice) newspaper, and Elman Guliev, executive secretary of the newspaper, who were accused of treason against the State.
In spite of the fact that the verdict announcement had been appointed to 3:00 p.m. local time, the verdict was announced by the judge in the morning, without the presence of defendants' advocates and relatives, and also without journalists. The court has informed that both defendants were found guilty under Article 274 of the Criminal Code ("Treason against the State") and sentenced as follows: Mamedov to 10 years of imprisonment (without property confiscation) and Guliev - to 6 years of imprisonment (without property confiscation). Both will serve their terms at a strict custody colony. A report by Leila Yunus, director of the Institute of Peace and Democracy and other sources.
Mamedov was convicted of treason under Article 247 of Azerbaijan's penal code for what the prosecution called "distribution of Talysh nationalist ideas and attempts to destroy the foundations of the Azerbaijani state," the independent news agency Regnum reported. News reports said the case was based on an allegation that Mamedov had received money from Iran to publish the newspaper, but prosecutors have not publicly explained or commented on the charges.
Defense lawyer Ramiz Mamedov (no relation to the journalist) told the U.S.-government funded Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty that the case was fabricated.
Mamedov has been held since February 2007, initially on charges of "resisting law enforcement" and later on the treason charge, Yunus said. In the first 15 days in custody, Mamedov was held incommunicado at a Ministry of National Security detention center, with neither family members nor lawyers able to visit him, according to news reports. Talyshi Sado stopped publishing after the arrest.
Talyshi Sado was the twice-monthly newspaper of Azerbaijan's ethnic Talysh minority, a group of about 100,000 who live mainly in the southern part of the country, along the border with Iran. Published in the Talysh language, the paper had a circulation of around 1,000. In addition to being the editor, Mamedov headed the Institute of Linguistics of the Azerbaijan National Academy of Science, according to press reports and CPJ sources.
Ramiz Mamedov, Novruzali Mamedov's advocate, has informed the "Caucasian Knot"
correspondent that, according to the legislation, the verdict should be announced publicly. He treated "the secret verdict announcement to be another proof of the forged character of the case."
"We condemn the heavy prison sentence handed to Novruzali Mamedov after a closed trial in the absence of defense counsel," CPJ Europe and Central Asia Program Coordinator Nina Ognianova said. "Authorities should make evidence against Mamedov public, and Azerbaijan should work to remedy, not aggravate, its record of jailing journalists on trumped-up charges."
PEN calls for details of the evidence used to convict Mamedov to be made public and for concerns that he is being held in violation of his rights to freedom of expression and association to be addressed.
BACKGROUND INFORMATION
The Talysh minority, primarily Shia Muslim, is mainly located in southeastern Azerbaijan. In 1993, in the middle of political turmoil in the country, the minority claimed self-determination under the leadership of the Talysh National Movement. Their autonomy claim did not reach public support and was suppressed. It is believed that the movement remains active. For more on the Talysh
see http://www.azerb.com/az-talyshstan.html
The Talysh-Mughan Autonomous Republic (also known as Talyshstan) was a short-lived
self-proclaimed autonomous republic in Azerbaijan, that lasted from June to August 1993, base on the self determination claims of the Talysh people.
It was located in extreme southeastern Azerbaijan, envisaging to consist in the 6 administrative districts of Azerbaijan around the regional capital city Lankaran: Lankaran, Lankaran rayon, Lerik, Astara, Masally and Yardymli. Historically the area had been a khanate, one of 15 historic Azerbaijani khanates.
The autonomous republic was proclaimed amid political turmoil in Azerbaijan, with the tacit support from Russia. In June 1993 a military rebellion against president Abulfaz Elchibey broke out under the leadership of Colonel Surat Huseynov. Colonel Alikram Hummatov (Alikram Gumbatov), the leader of the Talysh nationalists, seized power in the southern part of Azerbaijan and proclaimed the new republic in Lankaran, escalating violence. However, as the situation settled and Heydar Aliyev rose to power in Azerbaijan, the Talysh-Mughan Autonomous Republic, which failed to gain any significant public support, was swiftly suppressed.
Hummatov was arrested and initially received death sentence which was subsequently commuted to life imprisonment. In 2004 he was pardoned and released from custody under pressure from the Council of Europe. He was allowed to emigrate to Europe after making a public promise not to engage in politics. Gumbatov was expected to be released due to the amnesty proclaimed on Azerbaijan's International Solidarity Day (December 31, 2000). However this never happened. Today, a Talysh National Movement is still active, their aspiration being the restructuring of the Talysh-Mughan Autonomous Republic. However, those who were involved in proclamation of the autonomy say they always envisaged the autonomous republic as a constituent part of Azerbaijan.
Please send appeals…..
• expressing serious concern about reports of the closed trial against editor Novruzali Mamedov, which, if confirmed, would be in violation of Articles 10 and 11 (a) of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights;
• calling for details of the evidence used to convict Mamedov to be made public;
• urging authorities to address concerns that Mamedov is being held in violation of his rights to freedom of expression and association.
Eynulla FatullayevAnother Incident :
On 3 June 2008 the Azerbaijani Supreme Court upheld the decision taken by the appellate court of 16 January 2008, Eynulla Fatullayev, who is serving an eight and a half year sentence on charges linked to his critical reporting.
Eynulla Fatullayev, editor of Russian language weekly Realny Azerbaijan and the Azeri language weekly Gündelike Azerbaijan, was sentenced in April 2007 to two and a half years in prison on charges of 'criminal libel' and 'insult' under Article 147.2 of the Criminal Code and was immediately imprisoned. He was convicted for an article posted on the internet accusing the Azeri army of culpability in the deaths of Azeri citizens during an Armenian army siege of a city in Nagorno Karabakh in 1992. This article was attributed to him, but Fatullayev denied posting it. The same day as Fatullayev's conviction, his Realni Azerbaijan colleague Uzeyir Jafarov was attacked by unknown assailants, sustaining serious injuries. And again he was sentenced to eight and a half years in prison on 30 October 2007 on charges of terrorism and inciting ethnic hatred under article 214 of the Azeri Penal Code. He is currently being held in a prison just outside Baku.
English PEN was pleased to learn that imprisoned Azerbaijani editor Eynulla Fatullayev, has been awarded Human Rights Watch's Hellman/Hammett Grant for persevering with his work despite being subject to political persecution. This year, there are 34 award recipients from 19 countries, including fellow Azerbaijani editor Genimet Zakhidov and his brother, journalist Sakit Zakhidov. According to Human Rights Watch, recognition of the Azerbaijani journalists comes amid the deteriorating media situation in the country. For the past 18 months, the government has cracked down on independent and opposition media using serious criminal indictments, and moving away from more traditional defamation charges. Critics are worried that the restrictions on the media will make a free and fair vote in the presidential elections this autumn impossible.
English PEN considers the continued detention of Eynulla Fatullayev to be a breach of international standards guaranteeing freedom of expression and calls for his immediate release.
English PEN is alarmed by the rising number of Azeri journalists sentenced to lengthy prison terms in recent weeks on charges related to their writings. Five journalists are now serving prison terms on charges of defamation, terrorism and 'inciting religious enmity'. Although there have been frequent reports of attacks and imprisonments of journalists in Azerbaijan throughout recent years, there has been a dramatic upsurge in recent weeks.
According to Human Rights Watch, Fatullayev was fined 10,000 Azeri mantas (about US$12,000) for the same offense two weeks prior to his conviction. Tatiana Chaladze, the head of the Azeri Center for Protection of Refugees and Displaced Persons brought a civil claim against him as well as instigated the more recent criminal libel and insult charges. Fatullayev had previously been handed down a two-year suspended sentence in a September 2006 libel case.
On 22 May 2007, further charges of 'terrorism' were levied against him under Article 214 of the Criminal Code, for which he faces a further 12 years in prison. The Ministry for National Security has accused him of aiding the Armenian Special Forces, although no specific details are given. On 20 May, his newspaper's offices were searched by National Security agents and subsequently sealed. Its computers were seized, as were notebooks and other documents.
English PEN protests the sentence handed to Eynulla Fatullayev, as violating international standards guaranteeing the right to freedom of expression. It is alarmed by the additional charges levied against him that could lead to another sentence of up to 12 years.
PEN is calling for his immediate release and for the second charges to be dropped. PEN is furthermore gravely concerned by the threats made against Fatullayev and his family, urging that these acts be condemned by the authorities and that measures be taken to safeguard them against attack.
Please send appeals:
• Calling for the release of Eynullah Fatullayev and protesting the additional charges levied against him;
• Referring to the fact that the conviction and charges are in clear breach of Article 19 of the Universal Declaration on Human Rights;
• Calling for the provision of protection to Fatullayev and his family against attack;
• Expressing concern about the growing repression of the Azeri media in recent months.
For all cases mentioned here please send your appeals to
President Ilham Aliyev
Office of the President
19 Istiqlaliyyat Street
Baku AZ1066
Azerbaijan
Fax: +994 12 492 0625
E-mail: president@gov.az
Minister of Internal Affairs
Lt.-Gen. Ramil Usubov
Ministry of Internal Affairs
Husu Hajiyev Street 7
370005 Baku
Azerbaijan
Fax: + 994 12 492 45 90
It may be more effective to send the above appeals via the Azeri representative in London:
His Excellency Fakhraddin Gurbanov
Embassy of the Republic of Azerbaijan
London
W8 5 DL
HE Mr Rafael Ibrahimov
Embassy of the Republic of Azerbaijan
4 Kensington Court
London W8 5DL
Fax: (020) 7937 1783
see http://www.cpj.org/news/2008/europe/azer25jun08na.html
http://www.pen.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/2639/prmID/1610
http://eng.kavkaz-uzel.ru/newstext/engnews/id/1224259.html
www.armtown.com/news/en/a1p/20070206/45182/
www.armtown.com/news/en/pan/20071030/23909/
On 3 June 2008 the Azerbaijani Supreme Court upheld the decision taken by the appellate court of 16 January 2008, Eynulla Fatullayev, who is serving an eight and a half year sentence on charges linked to his critical reporting.
Eynulla Fatullayev, editor of Russian language weekly Realny Azerbaijan and the Azeri language weekly Gündelike Azerbaijan, was sentenced in April 2007 to two and a half years in prison on charges of 'criminal libel' and 'insult' under Article 147.2 of the Criminal Code and was immediately imprisoned. He was convicted for an article posted on the internet accusing the Azeri army of culpability in the deaths of Azeri citizens during an Armenian army siege of a city in Nagorno Karabakh in 1992. This article was attributed to him, but Fatullayev denied posting it. The same day as Fatullayev's conviction, his Realni Azerbaijan colleague Uzeyir Jafarov was attacked by unknown assailants, sustaining serious injuries. And again he was sentenced to eight and a half years in prison on 30 October 2007 on charges of terrorism and inciting ethnic hatred under article 214 of the Azeri Penal Code. He is currently being held in a prison just outside Baku.
English PEN was pleased to learn that imprisoned Azerbaijani editor Eynulla Fatullayev, has been awarded Human Rights Watch's Hellman/Hammett Grant for persevering with his work despite being subject to political persecution. This year, there are 34 award recipients from 19 countries, including fellow Azerbaijani editor Genimet Zakhidov and his brother, journalist Sakit Zakhidov. According to Human Rights Watch, recognition of the Azerbaijani journalists comes amid the deteriorating media situation in the country. For the past 18 months, the government has cracked down on independent and opposition media using serious criminal indictments, and moving away from more traditional defamation charges. Critics are worried that the restrictions on the media will make a free and fair vote in the presidential elections this autumn impossible.
English PEN considers the continued detention of Eynulla Fatullayev to be a breach of international standards guaranteeing freedom of expression and calls for his immediate release.
English PEN is alarmed by the rising number of Azeri journalists sentenced to lengthy prison terms in recent weeks on charges related to their writings. Five journalists are now serving prison terms on charges of defamation, terrorism and 'inciting religious enmity'. Although there have been frequent reports of attacks and imprisonments of journalists in Azerbaijan throughout recent years, there has been a dramatic upsurge in recent weeks.
According to Human Rights Watch, Fatullayev was fined 10,000 Azeri mantas (about US$12,000) for the same offense two weeks prior to his conviction. Tatiana Chaladze, the head of the Azeri Center for Protection of Refugees and Displaced Persons brought a civil claim against him as well as instigated the more recent criminal libel and insult charges. Fatullayev had previously been handed down a two-year suspended sentence in a September 2006 libel case.
On 22 May 2007, further charges of 'terrorism' were levied against him under Article 214 of the Criminal Code, for which he faces a further 12 years in prison. The Ministry for National Security has accused him of aiding the Armenian Special Forces, although no specific details are given. On 20 May, his newspaper's offices were searched by National Security agents and subsequently sealed. Its computers were seized, as were notebooks and other documents.
English PEN protests the sentence handed to Eynulla Fatullayev, as violating international standards guaranteeing the right to freedom of expression. It is alarmed by the additional charges levied against him that could lead to another sentence of up to 12 years.
PEN is calling for his immediate release and for the second charges to be dropped. PEN is furthermore gravely concerned by the threats made against Fatullayev and his family, urging that these acts be condemned by the authorities and that measures be taken to safeguard them against attack.
Please send appeals:
• Calling for the release of Eynullah Fatullayev and protesting the additional charges levied against him;
• Referring to the fact that the conviction and charges are in clear breach of Article 19 of the Universal Declaration on Human Rights;
• Calling for the provision of protection to Fatullayev and his family against attack;
• Expressing concern about the growing repression of the Azeri media in recent months.
For all cases mentioned here please send your appeals to
President Ilham Aliyev
Office of the President
19 Istiqlaliyyat Street
Baku AZ1066
Azerbaijan
Fax: +994 12 492 0625
E-mail: president@gov.az
Minister of Internal Affairs
Lt.-Gen. Ramil Usubov
Ministry of Internal Affairs
Husu Hajiyev Street 7
370005 Baku
Azerbaijan
Fax: + 994 12 492 45 90
It may be more effective to send the above appeals via the Azeri representative in London:
His Excellency Fakhraddin Gurbanov
Embassy of the Republic of Azerbaijan
London
W8 5 DL
HE Mr Rafael Ibrahimov
Embassy of the Republic of Azerbaijan
4 Kensington Court
London W8 5DL
Fax: (020) 7937 1783
see http://www.cpj.org/news/2008/europe/azer25jun08na.html
http://www.pen.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/2639/prmID/1610
http://eng.kavkaz-uzel.ru/newstext/engnews/id/1224259.html
www.armtown.com/news/en/a1p/20070206/45182/
www.armtown.com/news/en/pan/20071030/23909/
ANALYSIS: Rewriting the Law to Make Journalism a Crime
By Nina Ognianova
In its 17 years on the air, Moscow-based Ekho Moskvy Radio has enjoyed, by Russian standards, extraordinary editorial independence. Nearly alone among Russian broadcasters in its critical approach, the station employs some of the country’s most outspoken journalists, who produce in-depth reporting on the most sensitive issues of the day. But in the run-up to the March 2008 presidential election, even the unshakable Ekho has begun to feel a shudder of apprehension.
Ekho received a series of letters in midyear—15 in all—from Moscow prosecutors, the Federal Security Service, the prosecutor general’s office, and the state media regulator Rosokhrankultura, after the station gave airtime to Garry Kasparov and Eduard Limonov, leaders of the Other Russia coalition and organizers of the so-called Dissenters’ Marches in several major cities. In the letters, authorities informed Ekho that its April programs featuring Kasparov and Limonov were being investigated for carrying “public calls to extremism.” The authorities demanded the station provide transcripts of the programs and said that host Yuliya Latynina, one of Russia’s sharpest political commentators, had been placed under investigation as well. “Extremism” is an evolving and expanding term in Russian law. In successive years, parliament has sharply contracted the boundaries of acceptable reporting by redefining laws against extremism. Criticizing public officials and covering dissenting views are now outside the limits of permissible journalism. In pursuing this tactic—rewriting laws to restrict critical commentary—Russia has taken a regrettable lead in the region. Uzbekistan has rewritten laws to drastically limit the activities of foreign media, while Tajikistan has taken aim at Internet commentary by making much of it illegal.
The trend began in 2006, when the Russian parliament passed a measure broadening the
definition of extremism to include media criticism of public officials. The measure, which President Vladimir Putin signed into law over the objections of media and human rights groups, said extremist activity includes “public slander directed toward figures fulfilling the state duties of the Russian Federation”—the sort of catchall terminology used by the Soviets to prosecute critics in the past.
In 2007, parliament approved a series of amendments to the criminal code that were ostensibly designed to counter the growing nationalist and neo-Nazi movements. The amendment package, also signed into law by Putin, classifies “public justification of terrorism” as extremism and gives law enforcement officials broad authority to suspend noncompliant media outlets. The new law pointedly avoids defining “justification,” leaving critics to say that it will be interpreted very broadly.
“This law I compare to a surgical scalpel,” said Karen Nersisian, a prominent Russian lawyer known for defending journalists’ rights. “It is only to be used against those who
criticize—inconvenient individuals, inconvenient politicians, and, particularly, inconvenient journalists. The moment a journalist makes the decision to pick up a pen and write about a sensitive issue, he will be already at risk. This is why today, journalists are more and more cautious to write about hot subjects.”
Masha Lipman, editor of the Carnegie Moscow Center journal Pro et Contra, called the extremism legislation one more tool in the Kremlin’s now-bulging tool kit. Its
greatest threat to press freedom, she said, lies not in its actual use but in its contribution to an existing climate of self-censorship. “The law is designed to contribute to an environment in which every writer, every editor, every [media] owner would not forget that we can only exercise our freedom of expression because the Kremlin is permissive,” Lipman told CPJ. “The more instruments there are, the more authors would weigh it up, thinking, ’Maybe I should be more cautious, maybe I should censor myself.’ That is the point.”Several details in the 2007 amendments are of particular concern. One requires media to label as “extremist” in their reports any organization that the government has banned as such. Another bans the production and distribution of “extremist” material but does not specify what constitutes such material, even as it introduces new penalties for journalists, media outlets, and printers found guilty of the offense. The measure also expands the definition of extremism as a crime motivated by “hatred or hostility toward a certain social group” without clarifying the term “social group.” This purposely vague language is expected to have a chilling effect on the coverage of public officials,
businesspeople, and law enforcement officials.
“The effect of the new amendments could be compared to a cold shower on political journalism,” said Andrei Richter, director of the Moscow-based Media Law and Policy Institute. Since the extremism laws were first adopted in 2002, Richter said, the list of concepts that fall under its definition has grown long. And if a “cold shower” were not enough, authorities emphasized the point by moving quickly to initiate criminal proceedings against Kremlin critics. In September, state prosecutors brought charges against prominent political analyst Andrei Piontkovsky over statements in his 2006 book Unloved Country, a collection of political essays critical of Putin and his policies. The prosecutor in Piontkovsky’s case, who spoke briefly to The Washington Post after the hearing but refused to elaborate or give her name, said Unloved Country incited
“inferiority among people of Jewish, American, Russian, and other nationalities.”
On September 25, the court ordered that Unloved Country be subjected to a linguistic analysis to determine whether it contains extremist content. Piontkovsky and his lawyers said the accusations were utterly baseless. “There are no calls to extremism in my political diary,” Piontkovsky told CPJ. “Absolutely none. This book is very critical of Putin, yes, but the accusations against me are a laughing matter.” But Piontkovsky, who is now a visiting scholar at the conservative Washington-based Hudson Institute, is pessimistic about the potential verdict. “The court sent my book to undergo a linguistic [analysis] at the Institute of the Ministry of Justice. So you can imagine how ’independent’ the expertise will be. ... It will be independent only of sound logic.”
Piontkovsky’s case is the first to be tried under the newly amended law on fighting extremism. He faces up to five years in prison if convicted. “In the world, as a rule, the concept of extremism is linked to terrorism. But in Russia, it is used to describe critics of the powerful,” said Oleg Panfilov, director of the Moscow-based media watchdog Center for Journalism in Extreme Situations.
Russia has been unmoved by Western criticism of its backsliding on press freedom and democracy; instead, authorities have warned against what they call “foreign meddling” in their country’s internal affairs. Emboldened by the defiant attitude of their strong neighbor, authorities in the former Soviet states of Uzbekistan and Tajikistan have broadened their own restrictions against reporters. In other ex-Soviet countries—such as Azerbaijan—authorities have employed existing laws with new creativity and fresh vigor.
“I don’t think anyone can imitate what Russia is doing exactly because no one is as sophisticated as the Kremlin,” said Lipman, who also noted that Russia still allows greater press freedom than most other former Soviet states.
Still, Lipman said, Russia is clearly pulling former Soviet states back into its orbit of influence through political initiatives such as the Shanghai Cooperation Organization—a regional security alliance that includes China, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan. “And there is no doubt,” she said, “that these countries feel more secure having Russia by their side.” The regime of Uzbek President Islam Karimov, after all, might not have survived international outrage over the mass killings in the city of Andijan in May 2005 had it not been for the Kremlin’s public support.
A year after the killings—in which government troops fired on civilian demonstrators—Uzbek authorities further restricted the small independent press by passing a new law regulating the work of journalists for international media. With domestic media entirely under state control, international broadcasters such as the U.S. government-funded Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, the BBC, and the German public broadcaster Deutsche Welle—all of which support local-language services—have served as important alternatives for independent news.
International broadcasters lost their bureau accreditations and were forced to leave Uzbekistan in the months immediately after Andijan, but they retained informal networks of local stringers who continued to contribute to them at the risk of official harassment. Since the passage of the 2006 law, however, not only has reporting for international outlets become risky—it has also become illegal.
The new regulations give the Uzbek Ministry of Foreign Affairs wide discretion to issue formal warnings to foreign correspondents, revoke their accreditation and visas, and expel them. Among other vaguely worded bans, foreign correspondents were barred from “interfering in the internal affairs of the Republic of Uzbekistan, harming the honor and dignity of citizens of the Republic of Uzbekistan, interfering in their private lives, and committing other actions that provide for legal accountability.” The broad language of the measure does not define what constitutes interference in Uzbekistan’s internal affairs or in the private lives of citizens, nor does it specify “other actions” that are prohibited.
Interpretation of this law, like the Russian antiextremist measures, is left to state agencies. And, as in Russia, the law spreads and sustains a climate of fear and self-censorship. “The sense is that you can be attacked at any moment and placed under criminal investigation,” said Galima Bukharbaeva, a prominent exiled Uzbek journalist and 2005 recipient of CPJ’s International Press Freedom Award. “Any journalism but that of state media is outlawed.”
Putting the new regulations to immediate use, the Uzbek Foreign Ministry issued official
reprimands to several Deutsche Welle correspondents, forcing one to quit journalism and another to flee Uzbekistan to escape legal threats.
In Tajikistan, authorities are expanding restrictions to the Internet. In July, the Tajik parliament passed amendments to the country’s Criminal Code that broaden defamation provisions to include Internet publications. The bill, which President Emomali Rahmon signed into law in October, effectively criminalizes critical reporting and commentary online, and extends existing penalties for criminal insult and defamation to the Internet. Penalties include fines and prison terms of up to two years.
The Internet-specific amendments are significant for Tajikistan, where no daily newspapers circulate, independent weeklies are suppressed, and foreign broadcasters are barred from the airwaves. With the scarcity of available independent information, Central Asia news Web sites such as Ferghana and Centrasia, as well as Tajikistan-specific opposition sites such as Charogiruz and Tajikistan Times, have grown popular. The new amendments are expected to cause wide self-censorship among Web site contributors, according to CPJ sources in the region. Mukhtor Bokizoda, director of the Dushanbe-based press freedom group Foundation for the Memory and Protection of Journalists, told CPJ that officials tend to interpret criticism as libel, and that a politicized court system invariably sides with the government.
This is a common refrain. In Russia and other former Soviet states, journalists have little
confidence in the independence of their justice systems. “State agencies create a myth of a formal procedure,” Russian lawyer Nersisian told CPJ. “They choose the opponent, they put together a case, and the law acts as a guided missile against him.”
Said Panfilov: “Russian authorities are setting an example for those governments who want to re-create Soviet authoritarianism.”
One such country is Azerbaijan, where, in the words of Emin Huseynov, director of the
Baku-based Institute for Reporters’ Freedom and Safety (IRFS), authorities are following “a Russian scenario” in regard to critics. “Azeri authorities are now moving away from using defamation charges and [toward] more serious articles of the criminal code, such as terrorism,” he told CPJ. Because terrorism is such a grave charge, the crime is less likely to be challenged by the public, Huseynov said. “In Russia, few journalists report on the Chechen war,” he said, “because that could be assessed as a support of terrorism.”
Now Azerbaijani authorities are starting to use a similar approach, he told CPJ. Huseynov noted the October 30 conviction of Eynulla Fatullayev, the embattled editor of two popular independent newspapers that were forced to shut down after authorities imprisoned him in April. Fatullayev, convicted of terrorism and incitement of ethnic and religious hatred, was sentenced to eight and a half years in jail because of a critical piece on President Ilham Aliyev’s foreign policy regarding Iran. Authorities are growing more inventive, Huseynov said. “Today, it’s terrorism charges. Tomorrow, it will be revealing state secrets or extremism. ... It’s no longer only defamation. The practice is shifting.”
The climate is changing in the region, too. Aleksei Simonov, head of the Moscow-based Glasnost Defense Foundation, said Russian journalists have not yet been marginalized as dangerous dissidents. “Not yet, not yet, not yet,” he said. “But the climate is changing very rapidly.” Toward what? He paused and said: “Toward winter.”
http://www.cpj.org/attacks07/europe07/eur_analysis_07.html
-------------------------
This web log(blog) is dedicated for ‘Freedom of Expression’, as a means/measure/ manoeuvre of social service, all news and information posted herein, are collected from mostly electronic media/ online (published) news. The source party/ or the name who has the credit of the news shoulders all responsibility of the concerned news have been mentioned along with the posted/published news at bottom of every news, maintained and updated by Albert Ashok on behalf of http://rainbowartistsandwritersfoundation.blogspot.com a non-profit artists’ and writers’ organization defends ‘Freedom of Expression’ and ‘Human Rights’.If you find any news/information is incorrect/wrong then please bring it to our knowledge for immediate correction, we express our unwilling ignorance and ready to make information correct. email : rawfoundation@ymail.com Please visit us
Defend a blogger's right and The Committee to Protect Bloggers
Everyone has right to freedom of opinion and expressions; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.--- Article 19 ,
Abdel Fattah Murad, Kareem Amer,and ‘freedom of expression’ in Egypt
Sami Ben Gharbia writes: On February 22, the Egyptian court sentenced the 22-year-old blogger Abdel Kareem Soliman (aka Kareem Amer) to four years in prison for insulting Islam , inciting hatred of Islam in comments criticising the government’s authoritarian and religious excesses and criticising the president Hosni Mubarak and Islamist control of the country’s universities on his personal blog posts.
Egypt’s decision to sentence 23-year old blogger Kareem Amer to prison in February sparked a fury among the civil society and attracted much unwanted attention from international media. A critic of both the leading Islamic institution al-Azhar and the Egyptian government, Amer was sentenced to a four-year prison sentence for insulting Islam and President Mubarak on his blog. The case marks the first time Egypt refers a blogger to a prison term.
Amer’s lawyer Gamal Eid, who is also the director of the Cairo-based non-governmental
organization, The Arabic Network for Human Rights Information (HRInfo), stressed that “Kareem crossed the line by criticizing Islam, the President, and the Al-Azhar institution.”
Abdel Hadi suggested that the regime might have sought to “protect its legitimacy” by sentencing Amer, thus “demonstrating that they are tough on those criticizing religion.”
When combined with public activism, blogging is a particularly dangerous activity, according to Eid. In April, security officials at Cairo airport arrested Brotherhood-affiliated journalist and blogger Abdel Moneim Mahmoud as he attempted to travel to Sudan to do reporting on human rights in the Arab world.
Furthermore, on the March 12, Judge Abdel Fattah Mourad, head of the Alexandria Appeal Court, upheld Kareem’s four-year prison sentence and prepared to launch a lawsuit to block 21 blogs and websites for “defaming Egypt’s image and insulting the president.”
Hossam el-Hamalawy republished on his blog the following message from blogger Amr Gharbeia: The list, 21-websites-long, includes the blogs and sites that took part in the discussion around the book the Judge has written, and the wide plagiarism evident in the book copying HRInfo’s report on Internet Freedoms in the Arab World, and a how-to-blog guide written by blogger Bent Masreya. Of the 21 blogs and website, I was able so far to confirm Kifaya’s and HRInfo’s websites, in addition to the blogs of Bent Masreya, Yehia Megahed, and my own.
However, and despite the power and the unity that characterize the Egyptian blogshpere, many believe that the Egyptian regime, using the stratagem of sowing discord by condemning Kareem Amer, has succeeded in dividing Egyptian bloggers into two camps:
the Islamists, who criticize the way Kareem was writing about Islam and Muslims and, in a way, support his condemnation; and the liberals, who are defending Kareem’s rights and campaigning for his release. According to Elijah Zarwan, a Cairo-based researcher for Human Rights Watch, “many of the people who defended Kareem in the Egyptian blogosphere strenuously objected, publicly or privately, to some of his writings. But they still defended his right to express his views. In any case, as the Egyptian blogosphere grows, it is becoming more reflective of the diversity and pluralism of Egypt itself. Kareem didn’t divide the blogosphere. It wasn’t unified to begin with.”
Government repression no longer ignores bloggers .The Internet is occupying more and more space in the breakdown of press freedom violations. Several countries fell in the ranking this year because of serious, repeated violations of the free flow of online news and information.
In Malaysia (124th), Thailand (135th), Vietnam (162nd) and Egypt (146th), for example, bloggers were arrested and news websites were closed or made inaccessible. “We are concerned about the increase in cases of online censorship,” Reporters Without Borders said. “More and more governments have realised that the Internet can play a key role in the fight for democracy and they are establishing new methods of censoring it. The governments of repressive countries are now targeting bloggers and online journalists as forcefully as journalists in the traditional media.”
China maintains its leadership in this form of repression, with a total of 50 cyber-dissidents in prison. Eight are being held in Vietnam.
Egyptian bloggers, often at the forefront of exposing human rights abuses, are planning an online festival of torture videos to run alongside the 31st Cairo Film Festival, from 27 November to 7 December.
According to the “Middle East Times”, the parallel festival is the invention of a blogger named Walid, and will feature “controversial acts of torture allegedly committed by the security authorities.” Prizes, including a “Golden Whip”, will be awarded to the best entrants. Egypt’s bloggers have exposed many incidents of police torture. In a rare case of security forces being sentenced for abusing detainees, two policemen got three years in jail for torturing a man in their custody earlier this month. Footage of the abuse filmed with a mobile phone was widely distributed on YouTube and sparked nationwide and international outrage.
But bloggers who are critical of the government can also find themselves as victims. Egyptian blogger Kareem Amer, who is serving a four-year jail term for insulting Islam and President Hosni Mubarak, has recently been tortured while in custody, reports the Arabic Network for Human Rights Information (HRInfo). Amer, the first blogger to stand trial in Egypt for his Internet postings, has three more years left in his sentence.
Reporters Without Borders strongly condemned the arrest of journalist Hossam el-Hendy at Helwan University, south of Cairo, as “an attempt to intimate all bloggers in Egypt” after officials there reported him to police for taking photos and sending messages about a demonstration on his mobile phone.
El-Hendy, 22, who works for the daily paper Al-Dustour and the website Eshreen (www.20at.com ), was covering a 28 November protest that erupted when a speaker at a university conference on information technology said it was important to regulate online activity in Egypt. The press freedom organisation also deplored the suspension on 21 November of the YouTube account of journalist and blogger Wael Abbas, who had posted scenes of police brutality towards suspects, and of his Yahoo! E-mail account on 29 November.
“Abbas is seen by the country’s bloggers as a key figure who alerts Egyptians to acts of torture,” it said. “If some of his clips are too shocking, YouTube can ask him to remove them, but suspending his account is excessive.” Abbas has suggested a parallel event to the Cairo Film Festival that would award a “golden whip” to the video of the worst example of police torture.
Egypt is on the Reporters Without Borders list of “enemies of Internet freedom.”
One blogger, Kareem Amer, 22, is in prison for posting material online and has become a symbol of repression towards the country’s bloggers.
Reporters Without Borders hails the decision taken by the administrative court of Egypt’s state council on 29 December ’07 not to block access to 51 websites which judge Abdel Fattah Murad, the head of the Alexandria court, had accused of defaming and attacking the president.
“The real reason Murad wanted to block these sites was their reference to the charge of
‘intellectual dishonesty’ made against him last February. This ruling raises our hopes about respect for free speech on the Egyptian Internet and we would like to think that similar ones will follow, for example, in the case of Kareem Amer, a young blogger who has been imprisoned for criticising the president and others.”
A total of 21 sites, including Baheyya and Gharbeia, two popular blogs, and the site of the Arabic Network for Human Rights Information, were initially accused of attacking the president by Judge Murad on 11 March, after allegations circulated on the blogosphere that a book by the judge on the Internet’s legal challenges had been plagiarised. The judge subsequently added another 30 websites to his complaint.
The administrative court ruled that the sites were just content hosts and, as such, not responsible for the comments that might be posted on them. Judge Ahmed Hassaan, the head of the administrative court, refused to block the sites and denied that they had violated the constitution, as Murad had claimed.
The ruling has been hailed as “historic” by the Egyptian blogosphere. Gamal Eid, the head of the Arabic Network for Human Rights Information, said he was “delighted” by the decision. It presaged a “return to normal” for the Egyptian Internet and recognised “the right of Egyptian citizens to have access to a free network,” he said.
Egypt is one of the world’s most repressive countries as regards online activity. Two bloggers were arrested in 2007, including Kareem Amer.
Alexandra Sandels, a Cairo-based Swedish journalist, writes about the growing lack of press freedom in Egypt for Menassat: Despite the freedom of expression boundaries being pushed by the independent press and the blogging community, 2007 witnessed an upsurge in clampdowns on the press and free speech in Egypt.
Source: Menassat, Reporters Without Borders, International Freedom of Expression Exchange (IFEX), Worldwide Press Freedom, The Committee to Protect Bloggers,
http://www.freekareem.org/category/egyptian-blogosphere/
http://committeetoprotectbloggers.org/
http://freekareem.org/
Abdel Fattah Murad, Kareem Amer,and ‘freedom of expression’ in Egypt
Sami Ben Gharbia writes: On February 22, the Egyptian court sentenced the 22-year-old blogger Abdel Kareem Soliman (aka Kareem Amer) to four years in prison for insulting Islam , inciting hatred of Islam in comments criticising the government’s authoritarian and religious excesses and criticising the president Hosni Mubarak and Islamist control of the country’s universities on his personal blog posts.
Egypt’s decision to sentence 23-year old blogger Kareem Amer to prison in February sparked a fury among the civil society and attracted much unwanted attention from international media. A critic of both the leading Islamic institution al-Azhar and the Egyptian government, Amer was sentenced to a four-year prison sentence for insulting Islam and President Mubarak on his blog. The case marks the first time Egypt refers a blogger to a prison term.
Amer’s lawyer Gamal Eid, who is also the director of the Cairo-based non-governmental
organization, The Arabic Network for Human Rights Information (HRInfo), stressed that “Kareem crossed the line by criticizing Islam, the President, and the Al-Azhar institution.”
Abdel Hadi suggested that the regime might have sought to “protect its legitimacy” by sentencing Amer, thus “demonstrating that they are tough on those criticizing religion.”
When combined with public activism, blogging is a particularly dangerous activity, according to Eid. In April, security officials at Cairo airport arrested Brotherhood-affiliated journalist and blogger Abdel Moneim Mahmoud as he attempted to travel to Sudan to do reporting on human rights in the Arab world.
Furthermore, on the March 12, Judge Abdel Fattah Mourad, head of the Alexandria Appeal Court, upheld Kareem’s four-year prison sentence and prepared to launch a lawsuit to block 21 blogs and websites for “defaming Egypt’s image and insulting the president.”
Hossam el-Hamalawy republished on his blog the following message from blogger Amr Gharbeia: The list, 21-websites-long, includes the blogs and sites that took part in the discussion around the book the Judge has written, and the wide plagiarism evident in the book copying HRInfo’s report on Internet Freedoms in the Arab World, and a how-to-blog guide written by blogger Bent Masreya. Of the 21 blogs and website, I was able so far to confirm Kifaya’s and HRInfo’s websites, in addition to the blogs of Bent Masreya, Yehia Megahed, and my own.
However, and despite the power and the unity that characterize the Egyptian blogshpere, many believe that the Egyptian regime, using the stratagem of sowing discord by condemning Kareem Amer, has succeeded in dividing Egyptian bloggers into two camps:
the Islamists, who criticize the way Kareem was writing about Islam and Muslims and, in a way, support his condemnation; and the liberals, who are defending Kareem’s rights and campaigning for his release. According to Elijah Zarwan, a Cairo-based researcher for Human Rights Watch, “many of the people who defended Kareem in the Egyptian blogosphere strenuously objected, publicly or privately, to some of his writings. But they still defended his right to express his views. In any case, as the Egyptian blogosphere grows, it is becoming more reflective of the diversity and pluralism of Egypt itself. Kareem didn’t divide the blogosphere. It wasn’t unified to begin with.”
Government repression no longer ignores bloggers .The Internet is occupying more and more space in the breakdown of press freedom violations. Several countries fell in the ranking this year because of serious, repeated violations of the free flow of online news and information.
In Malaysia (124th), Thailand (135th), Vietnam (162nd) and Egypt (146th), for example, bloggers were arrested and news websites were closed or made inaccessible. “We are concerned about the increase in cases of online censorship,” Reporters Without Borders said. “More and more governments have realised that the Internet can play a key role in the fight for democracy and they are establishing new methods of censoring it. The governments of repressive countries are now targeting bloggers and online journalists as forcefully as journalists in the traditional media.”
China maintains its leadership in this form of repression, with a total of 50 cyber-dissidents in prison. Eight are being held in Vietnam.
Egyptian bloggers, often at the forefront of exposing human rights abuses, are planning an online festival of torture videos to run alongside the 31st Cairo Film Festival, from 27 November to 7 December.
According to the “Middle East Times”, the parallel festival is the invention of a blogger named Walid, and will feature “controversial acts of torture allegedly committed by the security authorities.” Prizes, including a “Golden Whip”, will be awarded to the best entrants. Egypt’s bloggers have exposed many incidents of police torture. In a rare case of security forces being sentenced for abusing detainees, two policemen got three years in jail for torturing a man in their custody earlier this month. Footage of the abuse filmed with a mobile phone was widely distributed on YouTube and sparked nationwide and international outrage.
But bloggers who are critical of the government can also find themselves as victims. Egyptian blogger Kareem Amer, who is serving a four-year jail term for insulting Islam and President Hosni Mubarak, has recently been tortured while in custody, reports the Arabic Network for Human Rights Information (HRInfo). Amer, the first blogger to stand trial in Egypt for his Internet postings, has three more years left in his sentence.
Reporters Without Borders strongly condemned the arrest of journalist Hossam el-Hendy at Helwan University, south of Cairo, as “an attempt to intimate all bloggers in Egypt” after officials there reported him to police for taking photos and sending messages about a demonstration on his mobile phone.
El-Hendy, 22, who works for the daily paper Al-Dustour and the website Eshreen (www.20at.com ), was covering a 28 November protest that erupted when a speaker at a university conference on information technology said it was important to regulate online activity in Egypt. The press freedom organisation also deplored the suspension on 21 November of the YouTube account of journalist and blogger Wael Abbas, who had posted scenes of police brutality towards suspects, and of his Yahoo! E-mail account on 29 November.
“Abbas is seen by the country’s bloggers as a key figure who alerts Egyptians to acts of torture,” it said. “If some of his clips are too shocking, YouTube can ask him to remove them, but suspending his account is excessive.” Abbas has suggested a parallel event to the Cairo Film Festival that would award a “golden whip” to the video of the worst example of police torture.
Egypt is on the Reporters Without Borders list of “enemies of Internet freedom.”
One blogger, Kareem Amer, 22, is in prison for posting material online and has become a symbol of repression towards the country’s bloggers.
Reporters Without Borders hails the decision taken by the administrative court of Egypt’s state council on 29 December ’07 not to block access to 51 websites which judge Abdel Fattah Murad, the head of the Alexandria court, had accused of defaming and attacking the president.
“The real reason Murad wanted to block these sites was their reference to the charge of
‘intellectual dishonesty’ made against him last February. This ruling raises our hopes about respect for free speech on the Egyptian Internet and we would like to think that similar ones will follow, for example, in the case of Kareem Amer, a young blogger who has been imprisoned for criticising the president and others.”
A total of 21 sites, including Baheyya and Gharbeia, two popular blogs, and the site of the Arabic Network for Human Rights Information, were initially accused of attacking the president by Judge Murad on 11 March, after allegations circulated on the blogosphere that a book by the judge on the Internet’s legal challenges had been plagiarised. The judge subsequently added another 30 websites to his complaint.
The administrative court ruled that the sites were just content hosts and, as such, not responsible for the comments that might be posted on them. Judge Ahmed Hassaan, the head of the administrative court, refused to block the sites and denied that they had violated the constitution, as Murad had claimed.
The ruling has been hailed as “historic” by the Egyptian blogosphere. Gamal Eid, the head of the Arabic Network for Human Rights Information, said he was “delighted” by the decision. It presaged a “return to normal” for the Egyptian Internet and recognised “the right of Egyptian citizens to have access to a free network,” he said.
Egypt is one of the world’s most repressive countries as regards online activity. Two bloggers were arrested in 2007, including Kareem Amer.
Alexandra Sandels, a Cairo-based Swedish journalist, writes about the growing lack of press freedom in Egypt for Menassat: Despite the freedom of expression boundaries being pushed by the independent press and the blogging community, 2007 witnessed an upsurge in clampdowns on the press and free speech in Egypt.
Source: Menassat, Reporters Without Borders, International Freedom of Expression Exchange (IFEX), Worldwide Press Freedom, The Committee to Protect Bloggers,
http://www.freekareem.org/category/egyptian-blogosphere/
http://committeetoprotectbloggers.org/
http://freekareem.org/
------------------------------
This web log(blog) is dedicated for ‘Freedom of Expression’, as a means/measure/ manoeuvre of social service, all news and information posted herein, are collected from mostly electronic media/ online (published) news. The source party/ or the name who has the credit of the news shoulders all responsibility of the concerned news have been mentioned along with the posted/published news at bottom of every news, maintained and updated by Albert Ashok on behalf of http://rainbowartistsandwritersfoundation.blogspot.com a non-profit artists’ and writers’ organization defends ‘Freedom of Expression’ and ‘Human Rights’.
If you find any news/information is incorrect/wrong then please bring it to our knowledge for immediate correction, we express our unwilling ignorance and ready to make information correct. email : rawfoundation@ymail.com Please visit us
If you find any news/information is incorrect/wrong then please bring it to our knowledge for immediate correction, we express our unwilling ignorance and ready to make information correct. email : rawfoundation@ymail.com Please visit us
Saturday, July 12, 2008
Who are behind the outages and blocking the blog?
Picture:Blogger is blocked
Since I published my article about the Anti-Obama blog outages last night the story has exploded across the blogosphere. I probably should have expected this, but I was surprised to find that within hours Blogspot users were announcing boycotts. All kinds of conspiracy theories were launched. Bloggers were using the incident to attack Obama, Google, or both. Free speech was under attack. Nazi comparisons were made. And I think an LOLcat or two weighed in.
I tried to contact Google for my article; no response. But I spoke to New York Times writer Miguel Helft today and he did manage to get a response from the search giant, which he published in this article:
On Monday, Google would not explicitly rebut the idea that it had been tricked but said that the cause of the temporary blockage appeared to be elsewhere. “It appears that our anti-spam filters caused some Blogger accounts to be blocked from creating new posts,” Google spokesman Adam Kovacevich said in a statement. “While we are still investigating, we believe this may have been caused by mass spam e-mails mentioning the ‘Just Say No Deal’ network of blogs, which in turn caused our system to classify the blog addresses mentioned in the e-mails as spam. We have restored posting rights to the affected blogs, and it is very important to us that Blogger remain a tool for political debate and free expression.”
Also, at least one of the affected bloggers got this email today from Google:
Hi there,
On behalf of the Blogger Team, I want to apologize for the recent trouble you’ve had with your locked blog. Automated spam detection is not yet a perfect science, and although we are constantly working to improve our tools, it appears that our filters have caused some Blogger accounts to mistakenly be blocked from creating new posts.
While we are still investigating, we believe this may have been caused by mass spam e-mails mentioning the “Just Say No Deal” network of blogs, which in turn caused our system to classify the blog addresses mentioned in the e-mails as spam. Regardless, we have restored posting rights to your blog, and it is very important to us that Blogger remain a tool for political debate and free expression.
So once again, we apologize for the inconvenience, and thank you for your patience as we looked into the problem.
Sincerely,
The Blogger Team
Their explanation is certainly interesting, and if true it means that Obama supporters had absolutely nothing to do with the Blogspot lockdowns.
I bet a few anti-Obama folks who thought they had discovered Hitler 2.0. might be feeling a little silly right now. Of course Miguel told me that Google wasn’t really elaborating much on this issue, and their claims sound a little suspicious, but wouldn’t it be ironic if they were telling the truth and the blogs were flagged simply because of the mass emailing?
a google Picture
For complete reading material Source: http://bloggasm.com/all-aboard-the-hyperbole-express
June 30, 2008 at 1:41 am · Filed under Politics, blog criticism
Carissa Snedeker had created her blog, Blue Lyon, three years ago and up until this point had very few problems posting new content. But this time a message from Google came up when she visited her dashboard.
“This blog has been locked due to possible Blogger Terms of Service violations,” the message stated. “You may not publish new posts until your blog is reviewed and unlocked.”
photo : Carissa Snedeker
When Snedeker clicked on the link at the bottom of the message she came to another one that told her that her blog “has characteristics of a spam blog” and, because of this, it had been locked. It allowed her the chance to send an “unlock request” but told her she’d have to wait up to four business days before someone at Google could review her blog and confirm it wasn’t publishing spam.
Snedeker received an email from another blogger claiming that a number of anti-Obama blogs had been “hacked” that same night. After some digging it became apparent that several Blogspot accounts had been shut down because of similar spam issues, and nearly all of them had three things in common: Most were pro-Hillary Clinton blogs, all were anti-Barack Obama, and several were listed on justsaynodeal.com, an anti-Obama website.
A “Flag Blog” link sits at the very top of every free Blogspot account. If a person finds objectionable content on a Blogspot site or suspects it’s publishing spam, he or she can click on the link and it will send a notice to Google requesting “human review.”
I spoke to several of the bloggers who had accounts locked and every single one was convinced that it was Obama supporters who had flagged the blogs in some kind of concerted effort to silence them. But when I asked for specific evidence of this, most simply pointed out that only anti-Obama blogs were targeted — a fact that is certainly suspicious but not especially conclusive.
A blogger who uses the pseudonym “GeekLove” (she wouldn’t agree to a phone interview and wouldn’t tell me her real name) said to me via email that when her blog, Come A Long Way, was shut down she thought it was a fluke as well.
“I also felt a little bit humiliated that someone would think to characterize my Blog as ’spam,’” she said. “I had no idea why it would be ’spam’ I assumed it was just some sort of mistake. I did think it was an isolated incident. I requested the Blogger review. I then went to the Hillary Clinton Forum, a place I frequently participate in on line discussions, and I saw Nobama’s post ‘Blogger just shut down my NObama Blog!!‘ Then when other Blogger blogs were affected, I knew it was more than coincidence.”
“I suspect that it was Obama supporters because I think the block was timed to affect blogs prior to the unity event so that we would not ‘rain on the unity parade,’ GeekLove said. “Also, Obama has ads out hiring people with no experience, except the ability to use computers. I presume these are the individuals responsible for silencing any opposition. His campaign has really harnessed the power of the internet and in the process learned to game the system in a way that I find frightening.”
When it comes to butting heads with Obama supporters, perhaps nobody has more experience than Larry Johnson. If his name rings a bell, it’s because Johnson, who worked for the CIA in the ’80s and now does military consulting, was the origin of the famous “whitey” claim. Not long ago he reported on his website that people connected with the McCain campaign are in possession of video footage of Michelle Obama saying derogatory things about white people. However, he admitted that he hadn’t actually seen the video and his two sources hadn’t seen it either. He quickly became a target of bloggers from both the right and left.
Several of the bloggers hit by the Blogspot outage also write at his site, No Quarter, and so Johnson has been watching the controversy with interest.
“We were contacted by our host in March and they claimed we were draining too many resources,” he said. “They shut us down completely. But when we went in to look at our site statistics it was evident that something else was clearly going on — we were the subject of some kind of spam attack that was putting a strain on the site.”
To ward off such attacks, he decided to go with his own server, a move that he said would make it harder to shut him down. But after he published the “whitey” claims, he had more direct conflicts with Obama supporters.
“The problem with these people who had their Google accounts shut down, they’re intimidated by it,” Johnson said. “They don’t want to get themselves in a situation so they would be identified. Some of these people who get identified, the Obama folks start picking up the phone and calling. I had phone calls into my office, threatening me, saying that you’re going to be fired, let me talk to your boss. I told them to go fuck themselves, because I am my own boss. It helps to be self-employed.”
Johnson and the other people interviewed for this article all agreed that Google was partly to blame for the outages. It was because of the search giant’s “guilty until proven innocent” approach, they said, that allowed the attackers to shut down the blogs so easily.
“My biggest objection is not necessarily that these people did this, but that Blogger had the policy that basically locks you out,” Snedeker said. “In other words you’re guilty until proven innocent, instead of the other way around, and that was what frustrated me.”
“I understand the need if you have some complaints from people that you need to investigate it,” Johnson said. “But you also have to make sure that the person filing the complaint is legitimate.”
An email I sent to Google requesting comment was not immediately returned. Nearly all the bloggers who were targeted by this spam crusade are not waiting around for their accounts to be restored. They’ve flocked to Wordpress and opened free accounts there (including Blue Lyon and Come A Long Way), and they don’t have any immediate plans to return to their original URLs once the dust settles.
What’s perhaps even more notable is that none of the people I spoke to is planning any kind of backlash against Obama supporters. It seemed to me that, for the most part, they just want to be left alone.
“While I am expressing my political beliefs, on Blogger it was a simple push of a button to mark my blog as spam and silence me,” GeekLove said. ” Pushing the button set me back a couple of days and I was unable to post anything during the unity event. The prospect of starting over on another blog was also daunting [and] I briefly, only briefly considered [giving] up blogging. Tactics like this work to silence opposition, why wouldn’t we expect more of that in the future?”
Contact me at simon.bloggasm@gmail.com
Bloggers readers have many things to comment:
John Samford said,
Hire an attorney. Don’t sue blogger, but the people that posted the spam complaint. You have a right to face your accuser,
If Blogger’s guilty-until-innocent policy is the problem, a perhaps effective response would be to click the “flag blog” button on great numbers of Blogger blogs–making the button useless.
Susan Nunes said, Blogger simply needs to disable and delete the “Flag” function on the top of the blog pages. People would have to email Blogger about spam blogs instead.
.
In any case, moving from Blogger just tells the perpetrators they’ve won.
Sister Toldjah said, Are Obama supporters having anti-Obama blogs shut down on Blogspot?
Just another example of how far some far left Obama supporters are willing to go to shut down criticism about the Obamessiah? Bloggasm and Stop The ACLU take a look.some reader can not believe it!
Is Google, owner of Blogspot, shutting down anti-Obama blogs?
Tantor said,
No longer will you be trouble by differing views of the world. ..
And really, don’t you know these kinds of attacks on free speech is how the Left works? If you put a conservative bumper sticker on your car during election season, you can expect the lefty stormtroopers to tear it off or razor blade it up. It happenned to me a couple times in different parts of the country and its happenned to other people. The Left wants a monopoly on all public forums. This kind of factional fight is akin to the Nazis attacking their rival Communist demonstrations back in the 1930s Germany.
John Samford: part of the problem here is that some of these bloggers want to remain anonymous. By confronting the attackers directly, they reveal their identity. That makes it very difficult for some of these folks to fight back.
Howard Hirsch said, June 30, 2008 Simon–
I am the Republican party chairman in Lyon County, Carissa’s base. I have known her for four years, ….
As pernicious as the liberal agenda is, it might be time for us on the other side to admit that its followers constitute a sizeable force, if not majority opinion in America today. That may be unfortunate (at least to me), but what is far more dangerous is that it intends to be the ONLY permissible opinion in America today. It will be interesting to see how an Obama Administration, sworn to defend the First Amendment, instead upholds some vague and unwritten “right not to be offended”.
Howard Hirsch, Chairman, Lyon County Republican Party Dayton, Nevada
PorkBomb said,
June 30, 2008 @ 5:11 pm
There are people being tortured in Chinese prisons right now because Google turned them in to the Chinese government. Many people seem to forget that.
Google is openly leftist. I have no doubt that they would aid and abet the elimination of opposition to the left’s messiah, Barack Obama. They censor and delete right-leaning videos and comments on YouTube and I’m not talking about raving racist garbage or death threats, I’m talking about people like Michelle Malkin. They do it on YouTube, why wouldn’t they do it on Blogger?
The “web 2.0″ leftists who manipulate and steer information on the internet are the latest and most dangerous version of leftist totalitarianism. Obviously, they are not wearing uniforms and kicking down doors but Google is insidiously evil and it’s time people began facing up to that.
Ellen K said,
June 30, 2008 @ 11:31 pm
I am not a Democrat. I am not a liberal. But I do passionately believe in free speech. And by my definition, that means that even when people disagree with me, they are legally given that right by our Constitution. Sadly, there are people who believe that manipulating campaigns and playing silly games are synonymous with political finesse. What worries me the most is that if these game players win the White House, at what point will they realize that life is not a game? I read the commentary, I find it appalling that an organized effort was used to shut down opposition. I also find it just a little bit scary that the Obama campaign and its subsidiaries think of this as normal behavior. When you look at the news, very little critical attenation is given to Mr. Obama’s views. And if you dare to oppose his views, you are labeled as either racist, a neo-con or backward. At some point someone is going to have to be brave enough to ask some hard questions of this man. I think a reading of “The Emperor’s New Clothes” is in order for the media in general. One final question, if indeed this was an organized effort to shut down opposition, doesn’t that make you question what type of candidate would sanction that type of behavior by subordinates? Just wondering.
Hillary or Bust said,
My blog was one of the blogs that was locked down by Blogger on June 26. I have since moved it to my own domain name
An unintended side effect of this juvenile attempt at censorship has been that my blog has actually gotten more exposure thanks to them. This story has now traveled throughout the blogosphere and is being covered by left and right wing blogs. So the final verdict is that their plan to shut us up completely and totally backfired.
That said, I am concerned that certain radical progressives are getting out of control (and I always considered myself a progressive). For more on this, please read:
http://hillaryorbust.com/2008/06/please-save-this-country-from-progressives/
Saskboy said,
July 3, 2008 @ 5:24 pm
Blogger is terrible at enforcing their Terms of Service. I’ve notified them of a series of blogs set up for harassment purposes (which is contrary to their TOS in multiple ways that I listed for them) and they just unflagged the blog, and cited “free speech”.
Source http://bloggasm.com/whos-responsible-for-shutting-down-a-number-of-anti-obama-blogspot-accounts,
Bloggasm is a blog run by Simon Owens that focuses on the media, with an emphasis on online media and journalism. It often features interviews with prominent bloggers, authors and journalists. If you want to request an interview, just drop us a line.
simon.bloggasm@gmail.com
Well, well, well. The squeaky wheel gets the grease. Magically, my posting privileges are back. Blogger sent me this email:
Hi there,
On behalf of the Blogger Team, I want to apologize for the recent trouble you've had with your locked blog. Automated spam detection is not yet a perfect science, and although we are constantly working to improve our tools, it appears that our filters have caused some Blogger accounts to mistakenly be blocked from creating new posts.
While we are still investigating, we believe this may have been caused by mass spam e-mails mentioning the "Just Say No Deal" network of blogs, which in turn caused our system to classify the blog addresses mentioned in the e-mails as spam.
Regardless, we have restored posting rights to your blog, and it is very important to us that Blogger remain a tool for political debate and free expression.
So once again, we apologize for the inconvenience, and thank you for your patience as we looked into the problem.
Sincerely,
The Blogger Team
Read complete news source @ http://bluelyon.blogspot.com/
http://bloggasm.com/whos-responsible-for-shutting-down-a-number-of-anti-obama-blogspot-accounts%20%20,
---------------------xox---------------------
All aboard the Hyperbole Express
June 30, 2008 at 10:32 pm · Filed under google, follow-up post
June 30, 2008 at 10:32 pm · Filed under google, follow-up post
Since I published my article about the Anti-Obama blog outages last night the story has exploded across the blogosphere. I probably should have expected this, but I was surprised to find that within hours Blogspot users were announcing boycotts. All kinds of conspiracy theories were launched. Bloggers were using the incident to attack Obama, Google, or both. Free speech was under attack. Nazi comparisons were made. And I think an LOLcat or two weighed in.
I tried to contact Google for my article; no response. But I spoke to New York Times writer Miguel Helft today and he did manage to get a response from the search giant, which he published in this article:
On Monday, Google would not explicitly rebut the idea that it had been tricked but said that the cause of the temporary blockage appeared to be elsewhere. “It appears that our anti-spam filters caused some Blogger accounts to be blocked from creating new posts,” Google spokesman Adam Kovacevich said in a statement. “While we are still investigating, we believe this may have been caused by mass spam e-mails mentioning the ‘Just Say No Deal’ network of blogs, which in turn caused our system to classify the blog addresses mentioned in the e-mails as spam. We have restored posting rights to the affected blogs, and it is very important to us that Blogger remain a tool for political debate and free expression.”
Also, at least one of the affected bloggers got this email today from Google:
Hi there,
On behalf of the Blogger Team, I want to apologize for the recent trouble you’ve had with your locked blog. Automated spam detection is not yet a perfect science, and although we are constantly working to improve our tools, it appears that our filters have caused some Blogger accounts to mistakenly be blocked from creating new posts.
While we are still investigating, we believe this may have been caused by mass spam e-mails mentioning the “Just Say No Deal” network of blogs, which in turn caused our system to classify the blog addresses mentioned in the e-mails as spam. Regardless, we have restored posting rights to your blog, and it is very important to us that Blogger remain a tool for political debate and free expression.
So once again, we apologize for the inconvenience, and thank you for your patience as we looked into the problem.
Sincerely,
The Blogger Team
Their explanation is certainly interesting, and if true it means that Obama supporters had absolutely nothing to do with the Blogspot lockdowns.
I bet a few anti-Obama folks who thought they had discovered Hitler 2.0. might be feeling a little silly right now. Of course Miguel told me that Google wasn’t really elaborating much on this issue, and their claims sound a little suspicious, but wouldn’t it be ironic if they were telling the truth and the blogs were flagged simply because of the mass emailing?
a google PictureFor complete reading material Source: http://bloggasm.com/all-aboard-the-hyperbole-express
June 30, 2008 at 1:41 am · Filed under Politics, blog criticism
Carissa Snedeker had created her blog, Blue Lyon, three years ago and up until this point had very few problems posting new content. But this time a message from Google came up when she visited her dashboard.
“This blog has been locked due to possible Blogger Terms of Service violations,” the message stated. “You may not publish new posts until your blog is reviewed and unlocked.”
photo : Carissa Snedeker When Snedeker clicked on the link at the bottom of the message she came to another one that told her that her blog “has characteristics of a spam blog” and, because of this, it had been locked. It allowed her the chance to send an “unlock request” but told her she’d have to wait up to four business days before someone at Google could review her blog and confirm it wasn’t publishing spam.
Snedeker received an email from another blogger claiming that a number of anti-Obama blogs had been “hacked” that same night. After some digging it became apparent that several Blogspot accounts had been shut down because of similar spam issues, and nearly all of them had three things in common: Most were pro-Hillary Clinton blogs, all were anti-Barack Obama, and several were listed on justsaynodeal.com, an anti-Obama website.
A “Flag Blog” link sits at the very top of every free Blogspot account. If a person finds objectionable content on a Blogspot site or suspects it’s publishing spam, he or she can click on the link and it will send a notice to Google requesting “human review.”
I spoke to several of the bloggers who had accounts locked and every single one was convinced that it was Obama supporters who had flagged the blogs in some kind of concerted effort to silence them. But when I asked for specific evidence of this, most simply pointed out that only anti-Obama blogs were targeted — a fact that is certainly suspicious but not especially conclusive.
A blogger who uses the pseudonym “GeekLove” (she wouldn’t agree to a phone interview and wouldn’t tell me her real name) said to me via email that when her blog, Come A Long Way, was shut down she thought it was a fluke as well.
“I also felt a little bit humiliated that someone would think to characterize my Blog as ’spam,’” she said. “I had no idea why it would be ’spam’ I assumed it was just some sort of mistake. I did think it was an isolated incident. I requested the Blogger review. I then went to the Hillary Clinton Forum, a place I frequently participate in on line discussions, and I saw Nobama’s post ‘Blogger just shut down my NObama Blog!!‘ Then when other Blogger blogs were affected, I knew it was more than coincidence.”
“I suspect that it was Obama supporters because I think the block was timed to affect blogs prior to the unity event so that we would not ‘rain on the unity parade,’ GeekLove said. “Also, Obama has ads out hiring people with no experience, except the ability to use computers. I presume these are the individuals responsible for silencing any opposition. His campaign has really harnessed the power of the internet and in the process learned to game the system in a way that I find frightening.”
When it comes to butting heads with Obama supporters, perhaps nobody has more experience than Larry Johnson. If his name rings a bell, it’s because Johnson, who worked for the CIA in the ’80s and now does military consulting, was the origin of the famous “whitey” claim. Not long ago he reported on his website that people connected with the McCain campaign are in possession of video footage of Michelle Obama saying derogatory things about white people. However, he admitted that he hadn’t actually seen the video and his two sources hadn’t seen it either. He quickly became a target of bloggers from both the right and left.
Several of the bloggers hit by the Blogspot outage also write at his site, No Quarter, and so Johnson has been watching the controversy with interest.
“We were contacted by our host in March and they claimed we were draining too many resources,” he said. “They shut us down completely. But when we went in to look at our site statistics it was evident that something else was clearly going on — we were the subject of some kind of spam attack that was putting a strain on the site.”
To ward off such attacks, he decided to go with his own server, a move that he said would make it harder to shut him down. But after he published the “whitey” claims, he had more direct conflicts with Obama supporters.
“The problem with these people who had their Google accounts shut down, they’re intimidated by it,” Johnson said. “They don’t want to get themselves in a situation so they would be identified. Some of these people who get identified, the Obama folks start picking up the phone and calling. I had phone calls into my office, threatening me, saying that you’re going to be fired, let me talk to your boss. I told them to go fuck themselves, because I am my own boss. It helps to be self-employed.”
Johnson and the other people interviewed for this article all agreed that Google was partly to blame for the outages. It was because of the search giant’s “guilty until proven innocent” approach, they said, that allowed the attackers to shut down the blogs so easily.
“My biggest objection is not necessarily that these people did this, but that Blogger had the policy that basically locks you out,” Snedeker said. “In other words you’re guilty until proven innocent, instead of the other way around, and that was what frustrated me.”
“I understand the need if you have some complaints from people that you need to investigate it,” Johnson said. “But you also have to make sure that the person filing the complaint is legitimate.”
An email I sent to Google requesting comment was not immediately returned. Nearly all the bloggers who were targeted by this spam crusade are not waiting around for their accounts to be restored. They’ve flocked to Wordpress and opened free accounts there (including Blue Lyon and Come A Long Way), and they don’t have any immediate plans to return to their original URLs once the dust settles.
What’s perhaps even more notable is that none of the people I spoke to is planning any kind of backlash against Obama supporters. It seemed to me that, for the most part, they just want to be left alone.
“While I am expressing my political beliefs, on Blogger it was a simple push of a button to mark my blog as spam and silence me,” GeekLove said. ” Pushing the button set me back a couple of days and I was unable to post anything during the unity event. The prospect of starting over on another blog was also daunting [and] I briefly, only briefly considered [giving] up blogging. Tactics like this work to silence opposition, why wouldn’t we expect more of that in the future?”
Contact me at simon.bloggasm@gmail.com
Bloggers readers have many things to comment:
John Samford said,
Hire an attorney. Don’t sue blogger, but the people that posted the spam complaint. You have a right to face your accuser,
If Blogger’s guilty-until-innocent policy is the problem, a perhaps effective response would be to click the “flag blog” button on great numbers of Blogger blogs–making the button useless.
Susan Nunes said, Blogger simply needs to disable and delete the “Flag” function on the top of the blog pages. People would have to email Blogger about spam blogs instead.
.
In any case, moving from Blogger just tells the perpetrators they’ve won.
Sister Toldjah said, Are Obama supporters having anti-Obama blogs shut down on Blogspot?
Just another example of how far some far left Obama supporters are willing to go to shut down criticism about the Obamessiah? Bloggasm and Stop The ACLU take a look.some reader can not believe it!
Is Google, owner of Blogspot, shutting down anti-Obama blogs?
Tantor said,
No longer will you be trouble by differing views of the world. ..
And really, don’t you know these kinds of attacks on free speech is how the Left works? If you put a conservative bumper sticker on your car during election season, you can expect the lefty stormtroopers to tear it off or razor blade it up. It happenned to me a couple times in different parts of the country and its happenned to other people. The Left wants a monopoly on all public forums. This kind of factional fight is akin to the Nazis attacking their rival Communist demonstrations back in the 1930s Germany.
John Samford: part of the problem here is that some of these bloggers want to remain anonymous. By confronting the attackers directly, they reveal their identity. That makes it very difficult for some of these folks to fight back.
Howard Hirsch said, June 30, 2008 Simon–
I am the Republican party chairman in Lyon County, Carissa’s base. I have known her for four years, ….
As pernicious as the liberal agenda is, it might be time for us on the other side to admit that its followers constitute a sizeable force, if not majority opinion in America today. That may be unfortunate (at least to me), but what is far more dangerous is that it intends to be the ONLY permissible opinion in America today. It will be interesting to see how an Obama Administration, sworn to defend the First Amendment, instead upholds some vague and unwritten “right not to be offended”.
Howard Hirsch, Chairman, Lyon County Republican Party Dayton, Nevada
PorkBomb said,
June 30, 2008 @ 5:11 pm
There are people being tortured in Chinese prisons right now because Google turned them in to the Chinese government. Many people seem to forget that.
Google is openly leftist. I have no doubt that they would aid and abet the elimination of opposition to the left’s messiah, Barack Obama. They censor and delete right-leaning videos and comments on YouTube and I’m not talking about raving racist garbage or death threats, I’m talking about people like Michelle Malkin. They do it on YouTube, why wouldn’t they do it on Blogger?
The “web 2.0″ leftists who manipulate and steer information on the internet are the latest and most dangerous version of leftist totalitarianism. Obviously, they are not wearing uniforms and kicking down doors but Google is insidiously evil and it’s time people began facing up to that.
Ellen K said,
June 30, 2008 @ 11:31 pm
I am not a Democrat. I am not a liberal. But I do passionately believe in free speech. And by my definition, that means that even when people disagree with me, they are legally given that right by our Constitution. Sadly, there are people who believe that manipulating campaigns and playing silly games are synonymous with political finesse. What worries me the most is that if these game players win the White House, at what point will they realize that life is not a game? I read the commentary, I find it appalling that an organized effort was used to shut down opposition. I also find it just a little bit scary that the Obama campaign and its subsidiaries think of this as normal behavior. When you look at the news, very little critical attenation is given to Mr. Obama’s views. And if you dare to oppose his views, you are labeled as either racist, a neo-con or backward. At some point someone is going to have to be brave enough to ask some hard questions of this man. I think a reading of “The Emperor’s New Clothes” is in order for the media in general. One final question, if indeed this was an organized effort to shut down opposition, doesn’t that make you question what type of candidate would sanction that type of behavior by subordinates? Just wondering.
Hillary or Bust said,
My blog was one of the blogs that was locked down by Blogger on June 26. I have since moved it to my own domain name
An unintended side effect of this juvenile attempt at censorship has been that my blog has actually gotten more exposure thanks to them. This story has now traveled throughout the blogosphere and is being covered by left and right wing blogs. So the final verdict is that their plan to shut us up completely and totally backfired.
That said, I am concerned that certain radical progressives are getting out of control (and I always considered myself a progressive). For more on this, please read:
http://hillaryorbust.com/2008/06/please-save-this-country-from-progressives/
Saskboy said,
July 3, 2008 @ 5:24 pm
Blogger is terrible at enforcing their Terms of Service. I’ve notified them of a series of blogs set up for harassment purposes (which is contrary to their TOS in multiple ways that I listed for them) and they just unflagged the blog, and cited “free speech”.
Source http://bloggasm.com/whos-responsible-for-shutting-down-a-number-of-anti-obama-blogspot-accounts,
Bloggasm is a blog run by Simon Owens that focuses on the media, with an emphasis on online media and journalism. It often features interviews with prominent bloggers, authors and journalists. If you want to request an interview, just drop us a line.
simon.bloggasm@gmail.com
Well, well, well. The squeaky wheel gets the grease. Magically, my posting privileges are back. Blogger sent me this email:
Hi there,
On behalf of the Blogger Team, I want to apologize for the recent trouble you've had with your locked blog. Automated spam detection is not yet a perfect science, and although we are constantly working to improve our tools, it appears that our filters have caused some Blogger accounts to mistakenly be blocked from creating new posts.
While we are still investigating, we believe this may have been caused by mass spam e-mails mentioning the "Just Say No Deal" network of blogs, which in turn caused our system to classify the blog addresses mentioned in the e-mails as spam.
Regardless, we have restored posting rights to your blog, and it is very important to us that Blogger remain a tool for political debate and free expression.
So once again, we apologize for the inconvenience, and thank you for your patience as we looked into the problem.
Sincerely,
The Blogger Team
Read complete news source @ http://bluelyon.blogspot.com/
http://bloggasm.com/whos-responsible-for-shutting-down-a-number-of-anti-obama-blogspot-accounts%20%20,
---------------------xox---------------------
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If you find any news/information is incorrect/wrong then please bring it to our knowledge for immediate correction, we express our unwilling ignorance and ready to make information correct. . email : rawfoundation@ymail.com Please visit us
Friday, July 11, 2008
Religious Intimidation and Blogger blocked/controled
Human expression in weblog/ blogger is being reined. Some where by state power / central power (government power), somewhere by service provider, it should be condemned.
in Blogspot, Pakistan, Blogger Blocked
Indus Asia Online Journal reports that the government of Pakistan has blocked Blogspot, cutting off access to thousands of blogs in the country. It was last reported blocked in Pakistan in September.
Mizzima reports that the tinhorns in Burma have, through the country’s two ISPs, blocked access to the Blogger.com blogging platform (also known as Blogspot).
In a bid to stop the flow of information outside Burma one of the most popular blog sites http://www.blogger.com/ has been banned by the Myanmar Post and Telecomm Ministry as of […]
Blogging as Protected Speech
According to Law.com, a judge in Manhattan has ruled that Google, the ISP of a blogger critical of a school board, is under no obligation to disclose the name of the blogger, known as Othormom. The ruling, based on the details of the complaint against the blogger, are not necessarily going to further establish blogging […]
Nazi Blogger Shut Down
Google has closed down the blog of Serbian neo-Nazi, Novosadjanin Goran Davidovi?. I just checked it and the message said, “This blog is in violation of Blogger’s Terms of Service and is open to authors only”. Blogger/Google is a private company, but the tendency to cinch up on weird thought is troubling. It certainly doesn’t […]
Burmese Bloggers Go Dark, Pt. 2
It has being widely reported throughout Pakistan that access to the entire blogspot.com domain has yet again been blocked in Pakistan. For about four months (since May, 2007) Google fortunately had changed the IP address of its Blogspot servers. The new IP addresses were not demarcated as prohibited by the censorship […]
According to Global Voices Advocacy, China Telecom has blocked feeds from the popular FeedBurner service. If you use China Telcom in China, you will not be able to reed the RSS feeds generated by FeedBurner.
Moon-Blog, who has done a traceroute from China to check the block, found that the traceroute failed at the backbone level […]
Update: Three hours of sleep is not your friend. I had a very old Slashdot posting. (Thanks, Anil.)
According to BBC News, Blogger has been hacked.
Google’s Blogger site is being used by malicious hackers who are posting fake entries to some blogs.
The fake entries contain weblinks that lead to booby-trapped downloads that could infect a […]
source http://committeetoprotectbloggers.org/category/blogger/
The Associated Press reports that today the Chinese government has blocked the video-sharing service YouTube. The block was in response to the posting of dozens of videos showing footage of the Tibet riots. Like last year’s Burmese riots, these have also been led by monks and have resulted in over 80 deaths so far.
A car belonging to YemenPortal, was vandalized today. Editor Walid Al-Saqaf indicated in a note that he believes official representatives of the Yemeni government directly responsible. He believes the action was a result of his attempt to provide alternative URLs for his site. He created an alternative domain and emailed it to several hundred subscribers […]
Report on Anti-Blogging Measures from Burmese Blogger
http://committeetoprotectbloggers.org/category/censorship
NEW LAWS THREATEN FREE EXPRESSION
http://www.ifex.org/en/content/view/full/95192/
ETHIOPIA
Ethiopia has passed a new media law that bans censorship of private media and the detention of journalists, but which critics say maintains other threats to free expression.
"Under the new law, previous restrictions against private media outlets, such as detention of journalists suspected of infringement of the law, has been scrapped," a Parliament statement said.
But opposition members say the law, passed on 1 July, still allows state prosecutors to invoke national security as grounds for impounding publishing materials prior to publication and distribution.
Opposition Parliamentarian Temesgen Zewede told reporters, "Although censorship is abolished, such a right to impound press material before distribution is tantamount to censorship."
The government is also planning to impose strict controls and "draconian" criminal penalties on non-governmental organisations (NGOs) in a separate law, say Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International.
Ethiopia says the draft law on charities and societies is a way for NGOs to be financially transparent and accountable to their stakeholders. But Human Rights Watch says the government's intent is "to consolidate that trend by taking the 'non' out of 'non-governmental' and putting civil society under government control."
For example, the draft law imposes stiff criminal penalties for anyone participating in "unlawful" civil society activity - jail time for participating in a meeting held by an unlawful organisation or disseminating the organisation's information.
Who decides which NGOs are lawful? The government of course - the bill calls for a Charities and Society Agency with extensive powers to license NGOs, monitor their activities and interfere in their management and staffing, says Human Rights Watch.
Plus, all non-Ethiopian NGOs are not allowed to carry out work related to human rights - making it difficult for IFEX members to report free expression violations or engage in human rights activities in the country. Meanwhile, Ethiopian rights NGOs that get more than 10 percent of funding from foreign sources would be considered foreign and would also be closed down.
"The law's key provisions are blunt and heavy-handed mechanisms to control and monitor civil society groups while punishing those whose work displeases the government," say Human Rights Watch and Amnesty. "It could also seriously restrict much of the development-related work currently being carried out by some of Ethiopia's key international partners."
Human Rights Watch and Amnesty are calling on donor governments, especially Ethiopia's biggest donors, the United States and the United Kingdom, to speak out publicly against the criminalisation of human rights work in Ethiopia.
"Their policy of silence has had the effect of helping to embolden the Ethiopian government to make further assaults on human rights, exemplified by the draft NGO law," says Human Rights Watch.
Prime Minister Meles Zenawi, once considered a pioneer of democracy in Africa, had seen his reputation wane since post-election violence that killed 200 people in 2005. Journalists and opposition members viewed as sympathetic to the protesters were then arrested and charged with treason, and now formal political opposition has become nearly extinct in most of the country.
Visit these links:
- Human Rights Watch: http://tinyurl.com/5jplq2
- "The Nation" (Kenya) on new media law: http://allafrica.com/stories/200807040064.html
- IFEX Ethiopia page: http://tinyurl.com/58q5rr
Intimidation-Free Europe?
July 9, 2008 by centurean2 The right of free expression is at stake
Holland, FITNA & Islamic Intimidation
Terrorism Lance Fairchok, Featured Writer April 3, 2008
“The film equates Islam with violence. We reject that interpretation,”
The Netherlands Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende
Geert Wilders film FITNA is a 15-minute indictment of Islamic radicalism. This terrifies the government of the Netherlands and it hopes minimize any violent reaction by condemning it. However, saying something does not make it so, no matter how endlessly it is repeated. It is not a matter of “interpretation,” it is a matter of truth; Islam brings violence. Decades of naïve multiculturalism, generous handouts and easy asylum for “Muslim refugees” has made Holland a land of two incompatible belief systems. Islam has become the largest active religion in Holland, its churches do not draw a fraction of the attendance that its mosques do.
The Dutch Prime Minister also rejects free speech in his condemnation, which is not surprising; the Netherlands may be the first European country to allow Shari’a law to compete with national courts. They may not have a choice. While the Dutch see themselves as eminently civilized and able to negotiate and appease conflict away, Muslim immigrant populations skyrocket. They dither while their country is stolen from under them.
Last October a Muslim radical attacked and seriously wounded two police officers with a knife in the city of Amsterdam. One officer was able to get off a shot, which killed the attacker. That officer nearly died. The event touched off days of riots and car burnings. Moroccan residents ironically claimed they were upset at being “stigmatized” as violent. The attacker, a member of a radical group with a long criminal record shouted “Allah Akbar” as he attacked. The fact that he was shot by a female officer did not help matters. The Dutch press avoided any mention of Islamic radicalism. The government-spun tales of disadvantaged youth, mental illness and economic inequities to distract the citizenry and like the French, deftly side stepped the problem.
Islam has been eating away at the Netherlands for many decades. Its sway is far out of proportion to its population. It demands special treatment and gets it. The government fears them, they know it, and exploit that fear at every turn. Dutchmen who speak out against Muslim violence toward women, such as Theo Van Gogh, are murdered in the street. Outspoken critics of Islam such as parliamentarian Ayan Hirsi Ali are hounded out of the country by a combination of intimidation and government cowardice. Residents in her apartment building asked for her to move after death threats were made. They did not feel safe. Perhaps the cowardice is cultural.
Europe is being methodically Islamicized. The steady undermining of the rule of law and democratic institutions by Islamic supremacists attempts to create two separate societies, with Islam preeminent. The intrinsic multicultural tolerance of nations like Holland and Belgium is turned against them. Islam is a bully, and the endless concessions to its hypersensitive self-image inevitably go unrewarded. Tolerance is a weakness, one gleefully exploited. Islam does not share the Dutch humanist ideology, an ideology that has transformed from a primrose path to utopia into a suicidal pathology.
“I condemn, in the strongest terms, the airing of Geert Wilders’ offensively anti-Islamic film. There is no justification for hate speech or incitement to violence. The right of free expression is not at stake here. I acknowledge the efforts of the Government of the Netherlands to stop the broadcast of this film, and appeal for calm to those understandably offended by it. Freedom must always be accompanied by social responsibility.” UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon on the film FITNA
The UN General Secretary, as usual, has it exactly backwards. His muddle-headed timorous leftism supports censorship to appease a violent minority, not social responsibility. When does the accusation of “incitement” translate into intimidation and extortion? At the point where free speech is silenced by threats, when incitement is defined as any criticism, however logical, when our standards of freedom, free expression and reason are overturned.
Wilders film does not incite violence, he merely points out the root cause, Islam provides the rest. The insistence that the Koran does not encourage violence is absurd. Of course it does, one merely has to tally the recorded acts of terror worldwide since 9-11 to see that unfortunate fact. The numbers do not lie. A quick cross reference with their holy book reveals violent virtues on many of its pages, as well as guidance for misogyny, pedophilia and genocidal hatred. They do not consider them metaphors. They act on them.
The outrage about this film is an inarticulate shout from a belief system trying to disguise its innate depravity and hide its hypocrisy. We cannot fight what we do not understand, and we cannot understand unless we examine more than the propaganda of Islamic apologists and their useful idiots. The film asks us to see a truth too many people, and too many governments simply ignore.
Geert Wilder’s film is easily accessible on the web. It should be spread to the widest possible audience. He says nothing in the film that is not true, nor does he make any unsupportable accusation. He is a man watching his nation and his culture slowly strangled. Making FITNA was an act of bravery and love of country, which has put Geert Wilders in mortal peril. It is a desperate rallying cry that may well be too late.
“So, fight them till all opposition ends and the only religion is Islam.” – Qur’an 8:39
http://www.therant.us/staff/l_fairchok/2008/04032008.htm
http://uk1884.wordpress.com/2008/07/09/intimidation-free-europe/
http://citizensagainstsharia.wordpress.com/2008/07/08/notice-what-does-not-offend-muslims/
We’re for freedom of expression and equality for women and religious minorities.Home About Standard Arguments Reform or Apostasy? Sharia More Sharia Resources:
Notice What Does NOT Offend Muslims .
The Amboy Times ( http://amboytimes.typepad.com/the_amboy_times/2007/02/how_the_pope_se.html
http://amboytimes.typepad.com/the_amboy_times/2007/02/how_the_pope_se.html )
watch.islam@gmail.com has posted a growing list of Things That Offend Muslims. Several of the items on this list have been protested quite visibly by many Muslims, in some cases including death threats, violence and even murder.
Thousands upon thousands of Muslims have protested a bunch of cartoons published in Denmark. Muslims worldwide have expressed their outrage, not only through peaceful protests, but also by burning down embassies and murdering innocent people.
More recently, the movie Fitna was produced by Geert Wilders, a Dutch PM. Again, thousands protested.
Now, let’s look at what does NOT offend Muslims….
If worldwide demonstrations, violence, and mayhem shows us what offends Muslims the most, then it is equally revealing to pay attention to the events that do not cause sufficient offense for Muslims to muster any noticeable protest at all:
Apostates Tortured, Killed: As we have noted, apostates of Islam may be threatened with death, even in the West. Recently, a Muslim man who converted to Christianity in Iran was arrested, tortured, and may yet be killed. Many other apostates have been killed, beaten, or threatened. Where’s the Muslim outrage over this travesty? Why are there no large, visible groups of Muslims fighting for the right of apostasy?
Religious Minorities Persecuted Throughout Muslim Lands: Christians, Jews, Bahais, Hindus, Buddhists and others are persecuted throughout the Muslim world. Why aren’t Muslims more offended by this than they are by a movie?
Women Treated as Second Class Citizens: In Pakistan, thousands of women in prison are rape victims. Honor killings, stoning of adulteresses, and FGM (female genital mutilation) plague the Muslim world. Saudi women can get into trouble for driving a car. Why no big demonstrations against this appalling treatment of women? Is this less of an offense than a cartoon?
Islam Linked to Militant Jihad by Muslims: Muslims are offended when non-Muslims discuss Islamic Jihad (which was one subject of the movie Fitna). However, there are Muslims who have linked militant Jihad to Islam, in modern times and throughout history, yet these Muslims who promote militant Jihad are never protested in a large way by other Muslims. A press release may be issued, but Muslims are not demonstrating in the streets over this. Why the double standard?
Mohammed’s Example Justifies Marital Sex with Nine-Year-Olds: According to a Saudi marriage official, a girl can be married at any age, even one year, so long as the marriage isn’t consummated until she is nine. This is based on authenticated Muslim Hadith (traditions) that Mohammed married Aisha, his favorite wife, when she was six and consummated the marriage when she was nine. How is it possible that Muslims aren’t sufficiently offended by the Saudi’s comment to protest his words?
Jews Marked for Death Worldwide: According to Palestinian cleric Wael Al-Zarad on Al-Aqsa TV, the Muslims’ blood vengeance against the Jews “will only subside with their [the Jews] annihilation.” This is not the only recent example of Muslims calling for a new Jewish holocaust. Why are Muslims not offended by these calls to genocide? Why is there no obvious sign of Muslim outrage over this?
OIC Moves to Quash Free Expression in the West: The OIC (Organization of the Islamic Conference) is making bold moves to stifle criticism of Islam through the UN. There is a plethora of other Muslim groups attempting to stifle free speech about Islam in the West. All Muslims who embrace free speech and free press must be terribly embarrassed about this. Where are the demonstrations?
Slavery Practiced by Muslims: Recently, UAE royals enslaved 17 women at a luxury hotel in Belgium. Slavery has never been entirely abolished in the Muslim world. Surely this would be enough to generate some Muslim outrage, but I have seen no mass demonstrations against those Muslims who continue this abhorrent practice.
It isn’t that no Muslims are offended by the above list. On the contrary, there are some examples of decent Muslims speaking out against abuses committed by Muslims, often in the name of Islam. To notice the lack of public demonstrations over the above list does not disparage the tremendous efforts of these brave individuals and small groups. However, the Muslim community as a whole does not seem sufficiently disturbed by the items on this list to protest them en masse. Why would some cartoons be more offensive than torturing and killing apostates? Why would a movie be more offensive than declarations of genocide? Where are the Muslims who would demonstrate in the streets for the right of apostasy, true equality for religious minorities in Muslim lands, equality for women, full renunciation of militant Jihad, marriage for adults only, respect for Jews, free expression, and a real abolition of slavery? Hello? Are you out there?
http://citizensagainstsharia.wordpress.com/2008/07/08/notice-what-does-not-offend-muslims/
Tuesday, July 08, 2008
'Public' online spaces don't carry speech, rights
by ANICK JESDANUN, AP Internet Writer Sun Jul 6, 2:17 PM ET
Say it on the Internet, and you'll find that free speech and other constitutional rights are anything but guaranteed.
Companies in charge of seemingly public spaces online wipe out content that's controversial but otherwise legal. Service providers write their own rules for users worldwide and set foreign policy when they cooperate with regimes like China. They serve as prosecutor, judge and jury in handling disputes behind closed doors.
The governmental role that companies play online is taking on greater importance as their services — from online hangouts to virtual repositories of photos and video — become more central to public discourse around the world. It's a fallout of the Internet's market-driven growth, but possible remedies, including government regulation, can be worse than the symptoms.
Dutch photographer Maarten Dors met the limits of free speech at Yahoo Inc.'s photo-sharing service, Flickr, when he posted an image of an early-adolescent boy with disheveled hair and a ragged T-shirt, staring blankly with a lit cigarette in his mouth.
Without prior notice, Yahoo deleted the photo on grounds it violated an unwritten ban on depicting children smoking. Dors eventually convinced a Yahoo manager that — far from promoting smoking — the photo had value as a statement on poverty and street life in Romania. Yet another employee deleted it again a few months later.
"I never thought of it as a photo of a smoking kid," Dors said. "It was just of a kid in Romania and how his life is. You can never make a serious documentary if you always have to think about what Flickr will delete."
There may be legitimate reasons to take action, such as to stop spam, security threats, copyright infringement and child pornography, but many cases aren't clear-cut, and balancing competing needs can get thorny.
"We often get caught in the middle between a rock and a hard place," said Christine Jones, general counsel with service provider GoDaddy.com Inc. "We're obviously sensitive to the freedoms we have, particularly in this country, to speak our mind, (yet) we want to be good corporate citizens and make the Internet a better and safer place."
In Dors' case, the law is fully with Yahoo. Its terms of service, similar to those of other service providers, gives Yahoo "sole discretion to pre-screen, refuse or remove any content." Service providers aren't required to police content, but they aren't prohibited from doing so.
While mindful of free speech and other rights, Yahoo and other companies say they must craft and enforce guidelines that go beyond legal requirements to protect their brands and foster safe, enjoyable communities — ones where minors may be roaming.
Guidelines help "engender a positive community experience," one to which users will want to return, said Anne Toth, Yahoo's vice president for policy.
Dors ultimately got his photo restored a second time, and Yahoo has apologized, acknowledging its community managers went too far.
Heather Champ, community director for Flickr, said the company crafts policies based on feedback from users and trains employees to weigh disputes fairly and consistently, though mistakes can happen.
"We're humans," she said. "We're pretty transparent when we make mistakes. We have a record of being good about stepping up and fessing up."
But that underscores another consequence of having online commons controlled by private corporations. Rules aren't always clear, enforcement is inconsistent, and users can find content removed or accounts terminated without a hearing. Appeals are solely at the service provider's discretion.
Users get caught in the crossfire as hundreds of individual service representatives apply their own interpretations of corporate policies, sometimes imposing personal agendas or misreading guidelines.
To wit: Verizon Wireless barred an abortion-rights group from obtaining a "short code" for conducting text-messaging campaigns, while LiveJournal suspended legitimate blogs on fiction and crime victims in a crackdown on pedophilia. Two lines criticizing President Bush disappeared from AT&T Inc.'s webcast of a Pearl Jam concert. All three decisions were reversed only after senior executives intervened amid complaints.
Inconsistencies and mysteries behind decisions lead to perceptions that content is being stricken merely for being unpopular.
"As we move more of our communications into social networks, how are we limiting ourselves if we can't see alternative points of view, if we can't see the things that offend us?" asked Fred Stutzman, a University of North Carolina researcher who tracks online communities.
First Amendment protections generally do not extend to private property in the physical world, allowing a shopping mall to legally kick out a customer wearing a T-shirt with a picture of a smoking child.
With online services becoming greater conduits than shopping malls for public communications, however, some advocacy groups believe the federal government needs to guarantee open access to speech. That, of course, could also invite meddling by the government, the way broadcasters now face indecency and other restrictions that are criticized as vague.
Others believe companies shouldn't police content at all, and if they do, they should at least make clearer the rules and the mechanisms for appeal.
"Vagueness does not inspire the confidence of people and leaves room for gaming the system by outside groups," said Lauren Weinstein, a veteran computer scientist and Internet activist. "When the rules are clear and the grievance procedures are clear, then people know what they are working with and they at least have a starting point in urging changes in those rules."
But Marjorie Heins, director of the Free Expression Policy Project, questions whether the private sector is equipped to handle such matters at all. She said written rules mean little when service representatives applying them "tend to be tone-deaf. They don't see context."
At least when a court order or other governmental action is involved, "there's more of a guarantee of due process protections," said Robin Gross, executive director of the civil-liberties group IP Justice. With a private company, users' rights are limited to the service provider's contractual terms of services.
Jonathan Zittrain, a Harvard professor who recently published a book on threats to the Internet's openness, said parties unhappy with sensitive materials online are increasingly aware they can simply pressure service providers and other intermediaries.
"Going after individuals can be difficult. They can be hard to find. They can be hard to sue," Zittrain said. "Intermediaries still have a calculus where if a particular Web site is causing a lot of trouble ... it may not be worth it to them."
Unable to stop purveyors of child pornography directly, New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo recently persuaded three major access providers to disable online newsgroups that distribute such images. But rather than cut off those specific newsgroups, all three decided to reduce administrative hassles by also disabling thousands of legitimate groups devoted to TV shows, the New York Mets and other topics.
Gordon Lyon, who runs a site that archives e-mail postings on security, found his domain name suddenly deactivated because one entry contained MySpace passwords obtained by hackers.
He said MySpace went directly to domain provider GoDaddy, which effectively shut down his entire site, rather than contact him to remove the one posting or replace passwords with asterisks. GoDaddy justified such drastic measures, saying that waiting to reach Lyon would have unnecessarily exposed MySpace passwords, including those to profiles of children.
To read more click the link
http://greatlibrarynews.blogspot.com/2008/07/public-online-spaces-dont-carry-speech.html
Free speech and fearless listening
By Rashme Sehgal
The digital revolution has ensured that more and more films are made on subjects dealing with exploitation, injustice and terror. But filmmakers from South Asia reported the intensity and frequency of state, mob and media censorship is also increasing
The spectre of censorship is spreading through South Asia, manipulating control of its democratic structures and traditions and creating increasingly authoritarian regimes.
Expressing concern at this trend, documentary filmmakers, lawyers and journalists from across South Asia gathered at the Max Mueller Bhavan in New Delhi in February 2006 to participate in a seminar titled ‘Free Speech and Fearless Listening: The Encounter with Censorship in South Asia’.
Sri Lanka’s Vimukhti Jayasundra’s film The Forsaken Land won a prestigious prize at the Cannes Festival in 2005. A triumphant Jayasundra returned home and to his surprise, he found a hostile environment. There were no reviews and no criticism either. As if this was not discouragement enough, the army entered the fray and decided “it was not a good film” and must be banned. Jayasundra got news that a group of army officers were planning to kill him and the members of his crew. Jayasundra fled the country and remained in exile for several months.
Prasanna Vithanage, also from Sri Lanka, described how several kinds of censorship have made life very difficult for the independent documentary maker who he describes as “being part of a vanishing breed”. Corporate censorship ensured that only large production houses were given the finance to make films. Worse was the draconian ‘army censorship law’ whereby any film that was perceived to affect national security would not receive a censor certificate.
The former was extremely dangerous because the intensification of the ethnic war had created a situation where filmmakers had become soft targets against whom it was easy to whip up a sentiment of hate.
Filmmaker Tanvir Mokkamel from Bangladesh confirmed the presence of a harsh censorship regime in his country. Although he is director of the Bangladesh Film Institute, he described how he has had several skirmishes with the censor board which behaved in contradictory ways that could be harsh, trivial or downright inconsistent.
Mokkamel recalls, “Many of my films were banned including my documentary Remembrance of ’71. The film focused on the killing of over 300 intellectuals in then East Pakistan. They were kidnapped, blindfolded and shot by the soldiers of the Pakistani army and by Islamic fundamentalists. It was one of the most horrifying periods of our life.”
Mokkamel added when his feature film Nadir Nam Modhumat (A River Named Modhumati) was being screened before the censor board. It turned out that the film had several shots of boats negotiating the river. The boat however turned out to be an election symbol of the opposition party and that had the censor board worried. “Why are there so many boats in the film?” he was asked.
Hasan Zaidi, writer and filmmaker from Karachi, pointed out that the present quasi-military dictatorship in Pakistan was following the method of “killing through ambiguity”. The government was not clamping down on the media but was concentrating on tightening the screws on the television media. For one, it was much easier to put pressure on their owners, and for another, television reached much wider audiences. It was for this reason that Indian networks had been taken off the air since they were threatening the cultural sanctity of the nation.
Anurag Kashyap, who has written scripts for such hits as Satya, Yuva and Nayak, describes the insurmountable problems that he faced while trying to release his two films Paanch and Black Friday. Paanch deals with the sub-culture of violence that has spread through Mumbai while Black Friday deals with the Mumbai riots of 1992. Kashyap described how Black Friday had received a censor clearance. But eight hours before its release, the consent was withdrawn. “I realised then that the police did not want it to be screened; neither did the politicians. .. Underlying this changed stance was the fact that if this film was released, other filmmakers would also start making similar films,” said Kashyap.
Other parallel issues were also explored during the course of this three-day seminar. At a session dealing with censorship-related laws participants pointed out the problems of invoking the right to freedom of expression laws because these invariably led to the invoking of other restrictions. Lawrence Liang, a Bangalore-based lawyer, spoke about the need to move from a prohibitive model which curtails freedom of speech to the productive model which removes curbs on creativity.
Surprisingly, censorship is as prevalent in western nations as it is in our part of the world. The highly-acclaimed German filmmaker Andres Veiel spoke about the problems he faced while making a film on Alfred Herrhausen, the chairman of Deutsche Bank, who is reported to have been killed by the CIA (at the behest of US banks) because he wanted to waive third world debt. While there was no proof about this theory, Veiel admits to having been at the receiving end of intimidation and threats. The film called Black Box Germany received the European Film Award for best documentary of 2001.
InfoChange News & Features, March 2006
http://infochangeindia.org/200603116240/Film-Forum/News-Views/Free-speech-and-fearless-listening.html
'Everyone has right to freedom of speech'
Fri, Mar 28 07:19 PM
Bollywood superstar Amitabh Bachchan refused to be drawn into a controversy over the MNS campaign against him saying that India was a free country and everyone has a right to freedom of expression.
"India is a free country and we have the right to freedom of speech and expression. I abide and respect the Constitution. Beyond this I have nothing to say," Bachchan said on the sidelines of International Indian Film Academy function.
Bachchan, who is the Brand Ambassador of IIFA, also said that he was not affected by the comments made by Maharashtra Navnirman Sena.
http://in.news.yahoo.com/indianexpress/20080328/r_t_ie_en_bwd/ten-everyone-has-right-to-freedom-of-spe-80df384.html
http://www.mumbaimirror.com/net/mmpaper.aspx?page=article§id=44&contentid=20080510200805100228367447cd2c196
_____________________________
This web log(blog) is dedicated for ‘Freedom of Expression’, as a measure/ manoeuvre of social service all news and information, posted herein, are collected from mostly electronic media/ online (published) news, the source party/ or the name who has the credit of the news shoulders all responsibility of the concerned news have been mentioned along with the original news at bottom of every news, maintained and updated by Albert Ashok on behalf of http://rainbowartistsandwritersfoundation.blogspot.com a non-profit artists’ and writers’ organization defends ‘Freedom of Expression’ and ‘Human Rights’.If you find any news/information is incorrect/wrong then please bring it to our knowledge for immediate correction, we express our unwilling ignorance and ready to make information correct. . email : rawfoundation@ymail.com Please visit us
in Blogspot, Pakistan, Blogger Blocked
Indus Asia Online Journal reports that the government of Pakistan has blocked Blogspot, cutting off access to thousands of blogs in the country. It was last reported blocked in Pakistan in September.
Mizzima reports that the tinhorns in Burma have, through the country’s two ISPs, blocked access to the Blogger.com blogging platform (also known as Blogspot).
In a bid to stop the flow of information outside Burma one of the most popular blog sites http://www.blogger.com/ has been banned by the Myanmar Post and Telecomm Ministry as of […]
Blogging as Protected Speech
According to Law.com, a judge in Manhattan has ruled that Google, the ISP of a blogger critical of a school board, is under no obligation to disclose the name of the blogger, known as Othormom. The ruling, based on the details of the complaint against the blogger, are not necessarily going to further establish blogging […]
Nazi Blogger Shut Down
Google has closed down the blog of Serbian neo-Nazi, Novosadjanin Goran Davidovi?. I just checked it and the message said, “This blog is in violation of Blogger’s Terms of Service and is open to authors only”. Blogger/Google is a private company, but the tendency to cinch up on weird thought is troubling. It certainly doesn’t […]
Burmese Bloggers Go Dark, Pt. 2
It has being widely reported throughout Pakistan that access to the entire blogspot.com domain has yet again been blocked in Pakistan. For about four months (since May, 2007) Google fortunately had changed the IP address of its Blogspot servers. The new IP addresses were not demarcated as prohibited by the censorship […]
According to Global Voices Advocacy, China Telecom has blocked feeds from the popular FeedBurner service. If you use China Telcom in China, you will not be able to reed the RSS feeds generated by FeedBurner.
Moon-Blog, who has done a traceroute from China to check the block, found that the traceroute failed at the backbone level […]
Update: Three hours of sleep is not your friend. I had a very old Slashdot posting. (Thanks, Anil.)
According to BBC News, Blogger has been hacked.
Google’s Blogger site is being used by malicious hackers who are posting fake entries to some blogs.
The fake entries contain weblinks that lead to booby-trapped downloads that could infect a […]
source http://committeetoprotectbloggers.org/category/blogger/
The Associated Press reports that today the Chinese government has blocked the video-sharing service YouTube. The block was in response to the posting of dozens of videos showing footage of the Tibet riots. Like last year’s Burmese riots, these have also been led by monks and have resulted in over 80 deaths so far.
A car belonging to YemenPortal, was vandalized today. Editor Walid Al-Saqaf indicated in a note that he believes official representatives of the Yemeni government directly responsible. He believes the action was a result of his attempt to provide alternative URLs for his site. He created an alternative domain and emailed it to several hundred subscribers […]
Report on Anti-Blogging Measures from Burmese Blogger
http://committeetoprotectbloggers.org/category/censorship
NEW LAWS THREATEN FREE EXPRESSION
http://www.ifex.org/en/content/view/full/95192/
ETHIOPIA
Ethiopia has passed a new media law that bans censorship of private media and the detention of journalists, but which critics say maintains other threats to free expression.
"Under the new law, previous restrictions against private media outlets, such as detention of journalists suspected of infringement of the law, has been scrapped," a Parliament statement said.
But opposition members say the law, passed on 1 July, still allows state prosecutors to invoke national security as grounds for impounding publishing materials prior to publication and distribution.
Opposition Parliamentarian Temesgen Zewede told reporters, "Although censorship is abolished, such a right to impound press material before distribution is tantamount to censorship."
The government is also planning to impose strict controls and "draconian" criminal penalties on non-governmental organisations (NGOs) in a separate law, say Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International.
Ethiopia says the draft law on charities and societies is a way for NGOs to be financially transparent and accountable to their stakeholders. But Human Rights Watch says the government's intent is "to consolidate that trend by taking the 'non' out of 'non-governmental' and putting civil society under government control."
For example, the draft law imposes stiff criminal penalties for anyone participating in "unlawful" civil society activity - jail time for participating in a meeting held by an unlawful organisation or disseminating the organisation's information.
Who decides which NGOs are lawful? The government of course - the bill calls for a Charities and Society Agency with extensive powers to license NGOs, monitor their activities and interfere in their management and staffing, says Human Rights Watch.
Plus, all non-Ethiopian NGOs are not allowed to carry out work related to human rights - making it difficult for IFEX members to report free expression violations or engage in human rights activities in the country. Meanwhile, Ethiopian rights NGOs that get more than 10 percent of funding from foreign sources would be considered foreign and would also be closed down.
"The law's key provisions are blunt and heavy-handed mechanisms to control and monitor civil society groups while punishing those whose work displeases the government," say Human Rights Watch and Amnesty. "It could also seriously restrict much of the development-related work currently being carried out by some of Ethiopia's key international partners."
Human Rights Watch and Amnesty are calling on donor governments, especially Ethiopia's biggest donors, the United States and the United Kingdom, to speak out publicly against the criminalisation of human rights work in Ethiopia.
"Their policy of silence has had the effect of helping to embolden the Ethiopian government to make further assaults on human rights, exemplified by the draft NGO law," says Human Rights Watch.
Prime Minister Meles Zenawi, once considered a pioneer of democracy in Africa, had seen his reputation wane since post-election violence that killed 200 people in 2005. Journalists and opposition members viewed as sympathetic to the protesters were then arrested and charged with treason, and now formal political opposition has become nearly extinct in most of the country.
Visit these links:
- Human Rights Watch: http://tinyurl.com/5jplq2
- "The Nation" (Kenya) on new media law: http://allafrica.com/stories/200807040064.html
- IFEX Ethiopia page: http://tinyurl.com/58q5rr
Intimidation-Free Europe?
July 9, 2008 by centurean2 The right of free expression is at stake
Holland, FITNA & Islamic Intimidation
Terrorism Lance Fairchok, Featured Writer April 3, 2008
“The film equates Islam with violence. We reject that interpretation,”
The Netherlands Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende
Geert Wilders film FITNA is a 15-minute indictment of Islamic radicalism. This terrifies the government of the Netherlands and it hopes minimize any violent reaction by condemning it. However, saying something does not make it so, no matter how endlessly it is repeated. It is not a matter of “interpretation,” it is a matter of truth; Islam brings violence. Decades of naïve multiculturalism, generous handouts and easy asylum for “Muslim refugees” has made Holland a land of two incompatible belief systems. Islam has become the largest active religion in Holland, its churches do not draw a fraction of the attendance that its mosques do.
The Dutch Prime Minister also rejects free speech in his condemnation, which is not surprising; the Netherlands may be the first European country to allow Shari’a law to compete with national courts. They may not have a choice. While the Dutch see themselves as eminently civilized and able to negotiate and appease conflict away, Muslim immigrant populations skyrocket. They dither while their country is stolen from under them.
Last October a Muslim radical attacked and seriously wounded two police officers with a knife in the city of Amsterdam. One officer was able to get off a shot, which killed the attacker. That officer nearly died. The event touched off days of riots and car burnings. Moroccan residents ironically claimed they were upset at being “stigmatized” as violent. The attacker, a member of a radical group with a long criminal record shouted “Allah Akbar” as he attacked. The fact that he was shot by a female officer did not help matters. The Dutch press avoided any mention of Islamic radicalism. The government-spun tales of disadvantaged youth, mental illness and economic inequities to distract the citizenry and like the French, deftly side stepped the problem.
Islam has been eating away at the Netherlands for many decades. Its sway is far out of proportion to its population. It demands special treatment and gets it. The government fears them, they know it, and exploit that fear at every turn. Dutchmen who speak out against Muslim violence toward women, such as Theo Van Gogh, are murdered in the street. Outspoken critics of Islam such as parliamentarian Ayan Hirsi Ali are hounded out of the country by a combination of intimidation and government cowardice. Residents in her apartment building asked for her to move after death threats were made. They did not feel safe. Perhaps the cowardice is cultural.
Europe is being methodically Islamicized. The steady undermining of the rule of law and democratic institutions by Islamic supremacists attempts to create two separate societies, with Islam preeminent. The intrinsic multicultural tolerance of nations like Holland and Belgium is turned against them. Islam is a bully, and the endless concessions to its hypersensitive self-image inevitably go unrewarded. Tolerance is a weakness, one gleefully exploited. Islam does not share the Dutch humanist ideology, an ideology that has transformed from a primrose path to utopia into a suicidal pathology.
“I condemn, in the strongest terms, the airing of Geert Wilders’ offensively anti-Islamic film. There is no justification for hate speech or incitement to violence. The right of free expression is not at stake here. I acknowledge the efforts of the Government of the Netherlands to stop the broadcast of this film, and appeal for calm to those understandably offended by it. Freedom must always be accompanied by social responsibility.” UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon on the film FITNA
The UN General Secretary, as usual, has it exactly backwards. His muddle-headed timorous leftism supports censorship to appease a violent minority, not social responsibility. When does the accusation of “incitement” translate into intimidation and extortion? At the point where free speech is silenced by threats, when incitement is defined as any criticism, however logical, when our standards of freedom, free expression and reason are overturned.
Wilders film does not incite violence, he merely points out the root cause, Islam provides the rest. The insistence that the Koran does not encourage violence is absurd. Of course it does, one merely has to tally the recorded acts of terror worldwide since 9-11 to see that unfortunate fact. The numbers do not lie. A quick cross reference with their holy book reveals violent virtues on many of its pages, as well as guidance for misogyny, pedophilia and genocidal hatred. They do not consider them metaphors. They act on them.
The outrage about this film is an inarticulate shout from a belief system trying to disguise its innate depravity and hide its hypocrisy. We cannot fight what we do not understand, and we cannot understand unless we examine more than the propaganda of Islamic apologists and their useful idiots. The film asks us to see a truth too many people, and too many governments simply ignore.
Geert Wilder’s film is easily accessible on the web. It should be spread to the widest possible audience. He says nothing in the film that is not true, nor does he make any unsupportable accusation. He is a man watching his nation and his culture slowly strangled. Making FITNA was an act of bravery and love of country, which has put Geert Wilders in mortal peril. It is a desperate rallying cry that may well be too late.
“So, fight them till all opposition ends and the only religion is Islam.” – Qur’an 8:39
http://www.therant.us/staff/l_fairchok/2008/04032008.htm
http://uk1884.wordpress.com/2008/07/09/intimidation-free-europe/
http://citizensagainstsharia.wordpress.com/2008/07/08/notice-what-does-not-offend-muslims/
We’re for freedom of expression and equality for women and religious minorities.Home About Standard Arguments Reform or Apostasy? Sharia More Sharia Resources:
Notice What Does NOT Offend Muslims .
The Amboy Times ( http://amboytimes.typepad.com/the_amboy_times/2007/02/how_the_pope_se.html
http://amboytimes.typepad.com/the_amboy_times/2007/02/how_the_pope_se.html )
watch.islam@gmail.com has posted a growing list of Things That Offend Muslims. Several of the items on this list have been protested quite visibly by many Muslims, in some cases including death threats, violence and even murder.
Thousands upon thousands of Muslims have protested a bunch of cartoons published in Denmark. Muslims worldwide have expressed their outrage, not only through peaceful protests, but also by burning down embassies and murdering innocent people.
More recently, the movie Fitna was produced by Geert Wilders, a Dutch PM. Again, thousands protested.
Now, let’s look at what does NOT offend Muslims….
If worldwide demonstrations, violence, and mayhem shows us what offends Muslims the most, then it is equally revealing to pay attention to the events that do not cause sufficient offense for Muslims to muster any noticeable protest at all:
Apostates Tortured, Killed: As we have noted, apostates of Islam may be threatened with death, even in the West. Recently, a Muslim man who converted to Christianity in Iran was arrested, tortured, and may yet be killed. Many other apostates have been killed, beaten, or threatened. Where’s the Muslim outrage over this travesty? Why are there no large, visible groups of Muslims fighting for the right of apostasy?
Religious Minorities Persecuted Throughout Muslim Lands: Christians, Jews, Bahais, Hindus, Buddhists and others are persecuted throughout the Muslim world. Why aren’t Muslims more offended by this than they are by a movie?
Women Treated as Second Class Citizens: In Pakistan, thousands of women in prison are rape victims. Honor killings, stoning of adulteresses, and FGM (female genital mutilation) plague the Muslim world. Saudi women can get into trouble for driving a car. Why no big demonstrations against this appalling treatment of women? Is this less of an offense than a cartoon?
Islam Linked to Militant Jihad by Muslims: Muslims are offended when non-Muslims discuss Islamic Jihad (which was one subject of the movie Fitna). However, there are Muslims who have linked militant Jihad to Islam, in modern times and throughout history, yet these Muslims who promote militant Jihad are never protested in a large way by other Muslims. A press release may be issued, but Muslims are not demonstrating in the streets over this. Why the double standard?
Mohammed’s Example Justifies Marital Sex with Nine-Year-Olds: According to a Saudi marriage official, a girl can be married at any age, even one year, so long as the marriage isn’t consummated until she is nine. This is based on authenticated Muslim Hadith (traditions) that Mohammed married Aisha, his favorite wife, when she was six and consummated the marriage when she was nine. How is it possible that Muslims aren’t sufficiently offended by the Saudi’s comment to protest his words?
Jews Marked for Death Worldwide: According to Palestinian cleric Wael Al-Zarad on Al-Aqsa TV, the Muslims’ blood vengeance against the Jews “will only subside with their [the Jews] annihilation.” This is not the only recent example of Muslims calling for a new Jewish holocaust. Why are Muslims not offended by these calls to genocide? Why is there no obvious sign of Muslim outrage over this?
OIC Moves to Quash Free Expression in the West: The OIC (Organization of the Islamic Conference) is making bold moves to stifle criticism of Islam through the UN. There is a plethora of other Muslim groups attempting to stifle free speech about Islam in the West. All Muslims who embrace free speech and free press must be terribly embarrassed about this. Where are the demonstrations?
Slavery Practiced by Muslims: Recently, UAE royals enslaved 17 women at a luxury hotel in Belgium. Slavery has never been entirely abolished in the Muslim world. Surely this would be enough to generate some Muslim outrage, but I have seen no mass demonstrations against those Muslims who continue this abhorrent practice.
It isn’t that no Muslims are offended by the above list. On the contrary, there are some examples of decent Muslims speaking out against abuses committed by Muslims, often in the name of Islam. To notice the lack of public demonstrations over the above list does not disparage the tremendous efforts of these brave individuals and small groups. However, the Muslim community as a whole does not seem sufficiently disturbed by the items on this list to protest them en masse. Why would some cartoons be more offensive than torturing and killing apostates? Why would a movie be more offensive than declarations of genocide? Where are the Muslims who would demonstrate in the streets for the right of apostasy, true equality for religious minorities in Muslim lands, equality for women, full renunciation of militant Jihad, marriage for adults only, respect for Jews, free expression, and a real abolition of slavery? Hello? Are you out there?
http://citizensagainstsharia.wordpress.com/2008/07/08/notice-what-does-not-offend-muslims/
Tuesday, July 08, 2008
'Public' online spaces don't carry speech, rights
by ANICK JESDANUN, AP Internet Writer Sun Jul 6, 2:17 PM ET
Say it on the Internet, and you'll find that free speech and other constitutional rights are anything but guaranteed.
Companies in charge of seemingly public spaces online wipe out content that's controversial but otherwise legal. Service providers write their own rules for users worldwide and set foreign policy when they cooperate with regimes like China. They serve as prosecutor, judge and jury in handling disputes behind closed doors.
The governmental role that companies play online is taking on greater importance as their services — from online hangouts to virtual repositories of photos and video — become more central to public discourse around the world. It's a fallout of the Internet's market-driven growth, but possible remedies, including government regulation, can be worse than the symptoms.
Dutch photographer Maarten Dors met the limits of free speech at Yahoo Inc.'s photo-sharing service, Flickr, when he posted an image of an early-adolescent boy with disheveled hair and a ragged T-shirt, staring blankly with a lit cigarette in his mouth.
Without prior notice, Yahoo deleted the photo on grounds it violated an unwritten ban on depicting children smoking. Dors eventually convinced a Yahoo manager that — far from promoting smoking — the photo had value as a statement on poverty and street life in Romania. Yet another employee deleted it again a few months later.
"I never thought of it as a photo of a smoking kid," Dors said. "It was just of a kid in Romania and how his life is. You can never make a serious documentary if you always have to think about what Flickr will delete."
There may be legitimate reasons to take action, such as to stop spam, security threats, copyright infringement and child pornography, but many cases aren't clear-cut, and balancing competing needs can get thorny.
"We often get caught in the middle between a rock and a hard place," said Christine Jones, general counsel with service provider GoDaddy.com Inc. "We're obviously sensitive to the freedoms we have, particularly in this country, to speak our mind, (yet) we want to be good corporate citizens and make the Internet a better and safer place."
In Dors' case, the law is fully with Yahoo. Its terms of service, similar to those of other service providers, gives Yahoo "sole discretion to pre-screen, refuse or remove any content." Service providers aren't required to police content, but they aren't prohibited from doing so.
While mindful of free speech and other rights, Yahoo and other companies say they must craft and enforce guidelines that go beyond legal requirements to protect their brands and foster safe, enjoyable communities — ones where minors may be roaming.
Guidelines help "engender a positive community experience," one to which users will want to return, said Anne Toth, Yahoo's vice president for policy.
Dors ultimately got his photo restored a second time, and Yahoo has apologized, acknowledging its community managers went too far.
Heather Champ, community director for Flickr, said the company crafts policies based on feedback from users and trains employees to weigh disputes fairly and consistently, though mistakes can happen.
"We're humans," she said. "We're pretty transparent when we make mistakes. We have a record of being good about stepping up and fessing up."
But that underscores another consequence of having online commons controlled by private corporations. Rules aren't always clear, enforcement is inconsistent, and users can find content removed or accounts terminated without a hearing. Appeals are solely at the service provider's discretion.
Users get caught in the crossfire as hundreds of individual service representatives apply their own interpretations of corporate policies, sometimes imposing personal agendas or misreading guidelines.
To wit: Verizon Wireless barred an abortion-rights group from obtaining a "short code" for conducting text-messaging campaigns, while LiveJournal suspended legitimate blogs on fiction and crime victims in a crackdown on pedophilia. Two lines criticizing President Bush disappeared from AT&T Inc.'s webcast of a Pearl Jam concert. All three decisions were reversed only after senior executives intervened amid complaints.
Inconsistencies and mysteries behind decisions lead to perceptions that content is being stricken merely for being unpopular.
"As we move more of our communications into social networks, how are we limiting ourselves if we can't see alternative points of view, if we can't see the things that offend us?" asked Fred Stutzman, a University of North Carolina researcher who tracks online communities.
First Amendment protections generally do not extend to private property in the physical world, allowing a shopping mall to legally kick out a customer wearing a T-shirt with a picture of a smoking child.
With online services becoming greater conduits than shopping malls for public communications, however, some advocacy groups believe the federal government needs to guarantee open access to speech. That, of course, could also invite meddling by the government, the way broadcasters now face indecency and other restrictions that are criticized as vague.
Others believe companies shouldn't police content at all, and if they do, they should at least make clearer the rules and the mechanisms for appeal.
"Vagueness does not inspire the confidence of people and leaves room for gaming the system by outside groups," said Lauren Weinstein, a veteran computer scientist and Internet activist. "When the rules are clear and the grievance procedures are clear, then people know what they are working with and they at least have a starting point in urging changes in those rules."
But Marjorie Heins, director of the Free Expression Policy Project, questions whether the private sector is equipped to handle such matters at all. She said written rules mean little when service representatives applying them "tend to be tone-deaf. They don't see context."
At least when a court order or other governmental action is involved, "there's more of a guarantee of due process protections," said Robin Gross, executive director of the civil-liberties group IP Justice. With a private company, users' rights are limited to the service provider's contractual terms of services.
Jonathan Zittrain, a Harvard professor who recently published a book on threats to the Internet's openness, said parties unhappy with sensitive materials online are increasingly aware they can simply pressure service providers and other intermediaries.
"Going after individuals can be difficult. They can be hard to find. They can be hard to sue," Zittrain said. "Intermediaries still have a calculus where if a particular Web site is causing a lot of trouble ... it may not be worth it to them."
Unable to stop purveyors of child pornography directly, New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo recently persuaded three major access providers to disable online newsgroups that distribute such images. But rather than cut off those specific newsgroups, all three decided to reduce administrative hassles by also disabling thousands of legitimate groups devoted to TV shows, the New York Mets and other topics.
Gordon Lyon, who runs a site that archives e-mail postings on security, found his domain name suddenly deactivated because one entry contained MySpace passwords obtained by hackers.
He said MySpace went directly to domain provider GoDaddy, which effectively shut down his entire site, rather than contact him to remove the one posting or replace passwords with asterisks. GoDaddy justified such drastic measures, saying that waiting to reach Lyon would have unnecessarily exposed MySpace passwords, including those to profiles of children.
To read more click the link
http://greatlibrarynews.blogspot.com/2008/07/public-online-spaces-dont-carry-speech.html
Free speech and fearless listening
By Rashme Sehgal
The digital revolution has ensured that more and more films are made on subjects dealing with exploitation, injustice and terror. But filmmakers from South Asia reported the intensity and frequency of state, mob and media censorship is also increasing
The spectre of censorship is spreading through South Asia, manipulating control of its democratic structures and traditions and creating increasingly authoritarian regimes.
Expressing concern at this trend, documentary filmmakers, lawyers and journalists from across South Asia gathered at the Max Mueller Bhavan in New Delhi in February 2006 to participate in a seminar titled ‘Free Speech and Fearless Listening: The Encounter with Censorship in South Asia’.
Sri Lanka’s Vimukhti Jayasundra’s film The Forsaken Land won a prestigious prize at the Cannes Festival in 2005. A triumphant Jayasundra returned home and to his surprise, he found a hostile environment. There were no reviews and no criticism either. As if this was not discouragement enough, the army entered the fray and decided “it was not a good film” and must be banned. Jayasundra got news that a group of army officers were planning to kill him and the members of his crew. Jayasundra fled the country and remained in exile for several months.
Prasanna Vithanage, also from Sri Lanka, described how several kinds of censorship have made life very difficult for the independent documentary maker who he describes as “being part of a vanishing breed”. Corporate censorship ensured that only large production houses were given the finance to make films. Worse was the draconian ‘army censorship law’ whereby any film that was perceived to affect national security would not receive a censor certificate.
The former was extremely dangerous because the intensification of the ethnic war had created a situation where filmmakers had become soft targets against whom it was easy to whip up a sentiment of hate.
Filmmaker Tanvir Mokkamel from Bangladesh confirmed the presence of a harsh censorship regime in his country. Although he is director of the Bangladesh Film Institute, he described how he has had several skirmishes with the censor board which behaved in contradictory ways that could be harsh, trivial or downright inconsistent.
Mokkamel recalls, “Many of my films were banned including my documentary Remembrance of ’71. The film focused on the killing of over 300 intellectuals in then East Pakistan. They were kidnapped, blindfolded and shot by the soldiers of the Pakistani army and by Islamic fundamentalists. It was one of the most horrifying periods of our life.”
Mokkamel added when his feature film Nadir Nam Modhumat (A River Named Modhumati) was being screened before the censor board. It turned out that the film had several shots of boats negotiating the river. The boat however turned out to be an election symbol of the opposition party and that had the censor board worried. “Why are there so many boats in the film?” he was asked.
Hasan Zaidi, writer and filmmaker from Karachi, pointed out that the present quasi-military dictatorship in Pakistan was following the method of “killing through ambiguity”. The government was not clamping down on the media but was concentrating on tightening the screws on the television media. For one, it was much easier to put pressure on their owners, and for another, television reached much wider audiences. It was for this reason that Indian networks had been taken off the air since they were threatening the cultural sanctity of the nation.
Anurag Kashyap, who has written scripts for such hits as Satya, Yuva and Nayak, describes the insurmountable problems that he faced while trying to release his two films Paanch and Black Friday. Paanch deals with the sub-culture of violence that has spread through Mumbai while Black Friday deals with the Mumbai riots of 1992. Kashyap described how Black Friday had received a censor clearance. But eight hours before its release, the consent was withdrawn. “I realised then that the police did not want it to be screened; neither did the politicians. .. Underlying this changed stance was the fact that if this film was released, other filmmakers would also start making similar films,” said Kashyap.
Other parallel issues were also explored during the course of this three-day seminar. At a session dealing with censorship-related laws participants pointed out the problems of invoking the right to freedom of expression laws because these invariably led to the invoking of other restrictions. Lawrence Liang, a Bangalore-based lawyer, spoke about the need to move from a prohibitive model which curtails freedom of speech to the productive model which removes curbs on creativity.
Surprisingly, censorship is as prevalent in western nations as it is in our part of the world. The highly-acclaimed German filmmaker Andres Veiel spoke about the problems he faced while making a film on Alfred Herrhausen, the chairman of Deutsche Bank, who is reported to have been killed by the CIA (at the behest of US banks) because he wanted to waive third world debt. While there was no proof about this theory, Veiel admits to having been at the receiving end of intimidation and threats. The film called Black Box Germany received the European Film Award for best documentary of 2001.
InfoChange News & Features, March 2006
http://infochangeindia.org/200603116240/Film-Forum/News-Views/Free-speech-and-fearless-listening.html
'Everyone has right to freedom of speech'
Fri, Mar 28 07:19 PM
Bollywood superstar Amitabh Bachchan refused to be drawn into a controversy over the MNS campaign against him saying that India was a free country and everyone has a right to freedom of expression.
"India is a free country and we have the right to freedom of speech and expression. I abide and respect the Constitution. Beyond this I have nothing to say," Bachchan said on the sidelines of International Indian Film Academy function.
Bachchan, who is the Brand Ambassador of IIFA, also said that he was not affected by the comments made by Maharashtra Navnirman Sena.
http://in.news.yahoo.com/indianexpress/20080328/r_t_ie_en_bwd/ten-everyone-has-right-to-freedom-of-spe-80df384.html
http://www.mumbaimirror.com/net/mmpaper.aspx?page=article§id=44&contentid=20080510200805100228367447cd2c196
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Three Depressed terrorists
Terrorism is inhuman act, an evil concept