Global Voices Advocacy » Tarek Amr http://advocacy.globalvoicesonline.org Defending Free Speech Online Tue, 22 May 2012 20:40:22 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3.2 Pakistan: Twitter has been Blocked http://advocacy.globalvoicesonline.org/2012/05/21/twitter-ban-pakistan/ http://advocacy.globalvoicesonline.org/2012/05/21/twitter-ban-pakistan/#comments Mon, 21 May 2012 12:56:51 +0000 Tarek Amr http://advocacy.globalvoicesonline.org/?p=7840 Twitter has been blocked in Pakistan on Sunday. The country's top telecommunications officials said that it was blocked because it refused to remove tweets considered offensive to Islam.

The tweets were promoting a competition on Facebook to post images of Islam's Prophet Muhammad, said Mohammad Yaseen, chairman of the Pakistan Telecommunication's Authority. Many Muslims regard depictions of the prophet, even favorable ones, as blasphemous.

The competitions is called Draw Muhammad Day, as tweeted the Welsh-Pakistani photographer, Sufian Ahmed

The news comes few hours after the Pakistani Minister of Interior, Rehman Malik, tweeted:

According to the Pakistani officials, “Both Facebook and Twitter were involved. We negotiated with both. Facebook has agreed to remove the stuff but Twitter is not responding to us”. Matih Abbas commented on this:

In fact, Facebooks also has been blocked for a while in Pakistan a couple of years ago.

Faizan Lakhani wondered:

Finally, it worth mentioning that few months ago, in March 2012, the Pakistan Telecommunications Authority published a request for proposals for the “deployment and operation of a national level URL Filtering and Blocking System”. Yet, seems that the government's effort are not succeeding so far, as Pakistanis still find ways to reach twitter even after the block. Aaqil Mahmood published some tips for breaking the block in his blog. And Yannis Koutsomitis ‏tweeted that TweetDeck and other twitter applications are still working.

Update: Nine hours after the ban, reports came that the ban has been removed.

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]]> http://advocacy.globalvoicesonline.org/2012/05/21/twitter-ban-pakistan/feed/ 6 Egyptian Activist Questioned by Military Prosecutor http://advocacy.globalvoicesonline.org/2011/08/15/egyptian-activist-questioned-by-military-prosecutor/ http://advocacy.globalvoicesonline.org/2011/08/15/egyptian-activist-questioned-by-military-prosecutor/#comments Mon, 15 Aug 2011 17:24:43 +0000 Tarek Amr http://advocacy.globalvoicesonline.org/?p=5476 The Egyptian activist and one of the founders of the April 6 Youth Movement, Asmaa Mahfouz, was investigated this Sunday by the military prosecution office on charges of defaming Egypt’s military rulers and calling for violence. The accusation of Asmaa was based on an earlier phone interview she had on Al-Nas Satellite TV Channel and on a message she cross-posted on both her twitter and facebook accounts.

Al-Masry Al-Youm wrote about the incident and translated Asmaa's tweet.

if the judiciary doesn’t give us our rights, nobody should be surprised if militant groups appear and conduct a series of assassinations, because there is no law and there is no judiciary.

Asmaa was later released on LE 20,000 (more than $3000) bail pending further investigations. However this doesn't stop the Egyptian users on twitter as well as the possible Presidential candidate Mohamed El-Baradei from condemning the incident.

@ElBaradei: Military trials for young activists, while Mubarak & co. stand before civilian courts, is a legal farce. Don't abort the revolution

Dozens of users on twitter also either retweeted or copied and pasted Asmaa's tweet challenging the military court.

@AmrEzzat:

رفاق تويتر:أدعوكم لترديد التويتات اللي هي تهمة أسماء محفوظ، ونطلب ضمنا لمتهمين القضية. والمجلس يحبس آلاف المدونين أو يحترم حرية الرأي
Dear twitter friends: I call you to repeat the tweet used in accusing Asmaa Mahfouz, and ask those who are interested in the case and the Supreme Council of Armed Forces to either jail all bloggers or respect the freedom of speech.

On the other hand the phone interview used as an evidence of her defaming the Supreme Council of Armed Forces was made when she was in the middle of Al-Abbasseya clashes, where activists and peaceful protesters were attacked by thugs, and about 300 protesters were injured and one died a few weeks later from injuries sustained.

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