The kidnapping of Philip Rizk; later they tried to get his father as well. Philip has now been freed.
The detention of protesters highlights Middle East governments' ambivalent attitudes towards support for the Palestinians.
Here it is worth noting of course that Philip is not alone in his arrest. Another blogger Diaa Eddin Gad has also been arrested as have several people attending a Muslim Brotherhood demonstration. A strong, collective message was sent last February when Egypt and Saudi Arabia introduced a pan-Arab regulatory framework for satellite television stations. The document, titled "Principles for Organizing Satellite Radio and TV Broadcasting in the Arab Region," clearly targets independent and privately owned stations that have been airing criticism of Arab governments.
This has helped trigger a Revolution, Facebook-Style. [more inside]
posted by adamvasco on Feb 11, 2009 - 5 comments

A Lone Tibetan Voice, Intent on Speaking Out. Woeser (previously mentioned here) is a Tibetan writer and poet living under house arrest in Beijing, from where she blogs about the recent unrest in Tibet (there are English translations of her posts at China Digital Times). Last year she was awarded the Norwegian Authors Union Freedom of Expression Prize, but she was not allowed to travel to Oslo to collect the prize.
posted by homunculus on May 6, 2008 - 15 comments

In the same spirit as the Open Net Initiative and Committee to Protect Bloggers that both track global internet filtering, Sami ben Gharbia's Access Denied Map tries to track the blocking of sites like Blogger, Flickr, YouTube and others by governments, as well as efforts by activists to keep them accessible or to challenge their blockage.
posted by Blazecock Pileon on Nov 19, 2007 - 5 comments

Irrepressible.info is a new campaign by Amnesty International and The Observer to fight internet censorship. One way to help is by publishing censored material from other websites onto your own.
posted by homunculus on May 28, 2006 - 15 comments

Iranian bloggers challenge the President in the Summit: It all started from a post on the Geneva Summit's blog, DailySummit, asking Iranians to report on the Net censorship. Then, they asked them to post their questions for the Iranian President, who was going to have a press conference. Then reporters asked the questions from the president: Is the there a blacklist for Iranian websites? Do you read Persian weblogs? How hard is it to connect to the Net in Iran? Later they asked tougher questions from the Minister of Telecommunications: Why don't they public the blacklist? Why Sina Motallebi, the blogger, was arrested? Isn't the summit about how technology benefits democracy and human rights? Blogs can definitely be a big part of the answer.
posted by hoder on Dec 11, 2003 - 6 comments