May, 2009

Monthly archive · 21 posts


Stories from May, 2009

29 May 2009

video posts
Video Interview With Gaurav Mishra About Digital Activism and Social Media in India

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In this video I interviewed, Gaurav Mishra, our colleague at Global Voices and the 2008-09 Yahoo! Fellow in International Values, Communications, Technology, and Global Internet at Georgetown University, about the role of social media and digital activism in India. From the right-wing Hindu nationalist Shiv Sena's Orkut Campaign to the more liberal Pink Chaddi Facebook Campaign, Gaurav explores in this interview how problems of religious conflicts are being reflected online, in a country where caste, class and religious divides remain very strong despite the secular nature of the state.

Iran: Fararu site and Twitter are accessible again

Iranian news sites reported that Twitter and Iranian Fararu news site are accessible again.

28 May 2009

Tunisia: First Woman to Get Six Years Prison For Her Online Activities

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On Thursday 14 May 2009, the 5th Criminal Chamber of the Court of First Instance in Tunis convicted the 22-year old ICT Student, Mariam Zouaghi, who was in custody, on separate terrorist-related charges, and sentenced her to six years in prison. Mariam Zouaghi is the first Tunisian woman to be convicted under The Anti-Terrorism Act of 10 December 2003.

27 May 2009

Egyptian Blogger to Pay a Heavy Fine For Reporting On Environmental Pollution

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The Egyptian blogger Tamer Mabrouk was punished yesterday, not by being sent to a prison cell, but was fined L.E. 2500 (446 USD), and civil compensation of L.E. 40.000 (7272 USD). A Court of Appeal in Port Said (Suez Canal) upheld the decision to sentence the blog Al-Hakika Al-Mesreyya (The Egyptian Truth) to a fine for Trust Chemical inc., which has filed a Libel and Slander case against Mabrouk in June 2008.

China: June 4th related system maintenance

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As the 20th anniversary of June 4th incident is approaching, university aggregated forums (貼巴) at Baidu (a major search engine and portal site in China), have been suspended. Users cannot...

26 May 2009

Iran: FaceBook is accessible again

Iranian news sites and blogs report that FaceBook is not anymore filtered in Iran. Senoghteh says [fa] that national and international protest forced Iranian government to make FaceBook available again.

24 May 2009

MENA: Introducing, “The Circumventer”

Alexandra Sandels, from MENASSAT, writes her interview with Walid Al-Saqaf, a Sweden-based Yemeni Internet expert, regarding the launch of his new program Al-Kasir (means the circumventer in Arabic) - during...