October, 2010

Stories from October, 2010

Iran: Khazali,blogger and physician was arrested

  15 October 2010

Mehdi Khazali, head of Iran's Medical Data Bank and son of hardliner, Ayatollah Abolghassem Khazali, was arrested on Wednesday by Iranian authorities. According to [fa] Sedaye Zendani, says Khazali wrote posts against Iranian government.[Update: he was released on was released on 200000 dollars bail in November]

China: A million posts deleted everyday at Baidu Tieba

  14 October 2010

According to the report at tech.163 on 13 of October 2010, the head of Baidu Tieba, an automatically generated forum through keyword search, Shu Xun said that the forum on average deleted 1 million posts every day. The report said: During a speech at the “2010 China Internet Marketing Business...

China: When the network was cut in Xinjiang…

  13 October 2010

After the riot in Urumqi in July 5 2009, the Internet and communication network in Xinjiang had been cut off for several months. So far, not much have been reported on the situation back then. Recently a netizen has written in detail what had happened between July 6 to December 25, 2009 in Xinjiang at daynew.net. This is a brief summary of the report.

Thailand’s Emergency: Who Killed the King?

  11 October 2010

David Streckfuss, a human rights expert on political and cultural history, finds that the heart of the longstanding and ongoing lèse majesté debate rests in the country’s defamation law. This truism concerns not only academics who are constrained from speaking freely but also ordinary citizens.

Our Guide “Mirroring a Censored WordPress Blog” now available in French

  8 October 2010

Global Voices Advocacy is pleased to release the French translation of our Mirroring a Censored WordPress Blog guide. The guide has been written by Sami Ben Gharbia (Global Voices Advocacy Director), with Rebekah Heacock (a research assistant for the OpenNet Initiative) and Jeremy Clarke (Global Voices web developer and Wordpress designer), and translated by our friend, blogger Anna Guèye.

Venezuela: WordPress reported inaccessible for three days

  1 October 2010

Since Sunday afternoon, September 26th, 2010, while Venezuelan elections for the National Assembly were still being held, several users started reporting that they were unable to access any blog hosted on the free blogging platform Wordpress.com from their internet connections within the country.