Segundo ela, na semana anterior, os executivos seniors do canal nos EUA receberam cartas com severas considerações e críticas sérias em relação ao filme. As cartas foram enviadas pelo PSDB de Minas Gerais. O PSDB afirmava que meu filme tinha caráter político-partidário, que não representava a realidade do acontecido no estado e questionava minha conduta ética na produção do filme. Junto as cartas foram enviadas também cópias da versão em inglês do vídeo produzido pelo PSDB e postado no YouTube.

Many bloggers, such as Paulo Fehlauer from Na Rua (screenshot above) had uploaded the video and for over a month exhibited an error message. Meanwhile, Current TV launched a month long investigation into the allegations and into Florêncio’s journalism procedures, resulting in Gagged in Brazil being put back online. André Deak [pt], who had interviewed Florêncio [pt] for his blog earlier this year, brings the news as a victory for freedom of press:

Em alguns lugares (especialmente na rede), parece que o jornalismo ainda é possível.

Released on the Current TV in UK on May 27, 2008, and in the US a week before, Gagged in Brazil had a Portuguese subtitled version uploaded on YouTube, triggering a huge reaction: its link made the rounds on e-mails, networking websites and the video achieved over 2,000 hits on Google, over 100,000 views on YouTube, not to mention the 6,000 hits on the Current TV version, in English.

Commenting on the film at the time of its release, Catatau [pt] says:

Salta aos olhos o enquadramento jornalístico de determinadas figuras políticas, como Aécio Neves e Lula. Enquanto para determinados políticos a linha editorial é branda, para outros a cobertura é implacável. Como se a imprensa escolhesse o rigor ou a parcialidade a partir de um jogo que foge aos olhos do espectador.

Soon after, Gagged in Brazil - The Other Side, the video response below, was posted on YouTube by the youth group at PSDB - and other six followed. The filmmaker has been accused of partisanship, data manipulation and non observation of journalistic principles. It also suggests that the documentary did not deserve that much attention because the filmmaker was just an expatriate Brazilian from Minas, not a reputed British journalist.

Freedom of press - an old issue

Gagged in Brazil was inspired by Liberdade, Essa Palavra (“Freedom, That Word”), a 2006 video report by then journalism student Marcelo Baêta, shot for his graduation dissertation. It linked the firing of five journalist in 2002 and 2003 to stories they wrote/broadcast that were critical of Aécio Neves. As Neves gets ready to run as presidential candidate in 2010, “the issue of press manipulation continues to unfold in Brazil”, discovers Elizabeth Tuttle during an interview with Marcelo Baêta for the Columbia Journalism Review. What’s the relevance of his documentary now?

First, Neves is one of the main presidential hopefuls for the 2010 elections. Second, the international repercussions of my video-documentary are still reverberating. This past May, it was heavily featured on the Current TV documentary “Gagged in Brazil,” which has since been viewed on YouTube 50,000 times. In June, the governor’s PR department posted yet another video response, this time to the Current TV’s video.

In a recent comment on the article above, reader Diógenes Pinto Carvalhaes claims that Columbia Journalism School should not have published such an interview without “showing ‘the other side’ of this controversial subject”:

I thought this subject was buried in the past, but it returns again like a ghost. Why is it coming back? For the same reason that it has appeared in 2006… At that moment, the alleged censorship in Minas Gerais was a leitmotiv in the opposition campaign, when Aécio Neves was running for a second term. Macelo Baêta’s video was a precious item of propaganda against Aécio Neves and largely scattered by anonymous spams in the internet. Now, Aécio Neves is one of the names most seriously considered for nomination in the next Brazilian presidential campaign.

However, the case of media censorship in Minas Gerais is far from a buried issue. In the middle of the local election last September, the opposing news website ‘Novo Jornal’ was taken down by Brazil’s Public Ministry (state level prosecutors) on charges of anonymity, as reported by Global Voices. And not even blogs escape from politicians’ attempts to gag those who try to have a voice on their own. Only last month, political scientist Fernando Massote [pt] was under threat of legal action by a local politician for replicating unfavorable news on his blog:

Informo que estou respondendo a interpelação judicial interposta pelo Sr. Marcio Lacerda. O candidato a prefeitura de BH me intima a confirmar conteúdos publicados no meu blog  www.massote.pro.br e me ameaça de processo por difamação, calúnia e injuria. Sendo assim, confirmo a autoria de todos os textos definitivos que foram postados e permaneceram no meu blog, da data em que foram publicados até hoje. Estes textos são muito conhecidos pela alta freqüência de visitantes à minha publicação eletrônica. A difusão do meu blog, como todos sabem, é uma conseqüência entre outros fatores, da grande crise da imprensa em Minas Gerais, causada também pela censura de que é vitima e que tem sido amplamente denunciada.

Over 50 bloggers, students and netizens participated in the flash mob last Friday at Avenida Paulista, one of the city’s most important avenues and financial centers. The protest was organized through blogs and mostly twitter. Lúcia Freitas reports:

A postos, mostramos nossos cartazes. alguém de dentro do ônibus acena. Pessoas param nas calçadas de ambos os lados. Motos e carros buzinam. Ao comando, viramos para o outro lado (ímpar) da avenida. Os fotógrafos fazem farra. A gente diz em alto e bom som: Não!

In fact, due to bad weather and terrible traffic, many people only managed to get there late. Political Scientist Sérgio Amadeu [pt] says that these late comers demanded to be part of the protest, so a quick decision was made for another performance, this time attended by over 100 people:

Bom, como uma manifestação auto-organizada ela resolveu se auto-constituir de novo. A flashmob virou uma refreshmob.

Photo by Paulo Fehlauer who also has a video showing the protest at Avenida Paulista

On the day before, a public hearing was held in Brasília and some bloggers took the time to attend the debate (see a video and twitter reactions). They had their mouths closed with sellotape to protest against the over-surveillance on the Internet that the bill may bring if approved. Daniel Padua [pt] was there and said it had a positive outcome as the case against was very well laid by both specialists and members of parliament:

A força dos argumentos foi uma surpresa pros defensores do projeto, que acabaram soando ridículos e despreparados - como no caso do delegado da PF (alguma coisa Sobral) - que apresentou uma história na qual a PF tinha os IPs de suspeitos de pedofilia, mas só conseguiu prender 1/5 deles pela falta de um processo jurídico adequado, e foi questionado pelo deputado Paulo Teixeira: “bom, a PF tinha os IPs, não? então se vocês já conseguem os IPs das pessoas, porque precisam desse projeto de lei?”

Marcelo Träsel [pt] says that a battle was won but the fight goes ahead. He unveils whose interests are in fact behind the bill:

Porque no fim das contas é disso que se trata: os bancos estão tentando impor uma legislação estúpida para deixarem de assumir a responsabilidade por tornar seus sistemas de transação eletrônica mais seguros. Afinal, garantir a segurança de dados custa dinheiro. E dinheiro é o que os bancos deram, coincidentemente, para a campanha a senador de Azeredo e muitos outros deputados. Estão pouco ligando se vão emperrar o processo cultural ou o avanço da inclusão digital no Brasil.

According to João Carlos Caribé [pt], this public hearing, virtually the first open debate about the bill, was made possible through liaising by the organizers of an online petition [pt] in defense of freedom and progress of knowledge on the Brazilian Internet. It has been signed by over 121,400 citizens, which is not much, considering Brazil’s nearly 200 million population. Gabriel Sadoco [pt] writes about it at this Saturday’s blog carnival [pt] about politics and says that people should not be so apathetic regarding this and others issues:

E a esses brasileiros que não se incomodam com o que acontece no seu país. Que preferem assistir as tragédias do jornal antes da novela das oito e só servem pra fazer peso no mundo, acordem para a realidade e comecem a protestar, porque você ainda tem direito a isso. Não ao vigilantismo.
Privacidade e liberdade pra todo mundo!

Mário Amaya [pt] has designed the poster that many bloggers have been carrying with them, which can be downloaded and printed out. He is also the designer of many of the online banners that have spread on the blogosphere.

Freedom on the Internet

Judge Daw Soe recently sentenced Nay Phone Latt to a total of twenty years and six months for possession of a banned video and having a blog to express his concerns about the increasingly difficulty of Burmese people to voice their opinions since the protests last year.

Nay was first arrested in January but was released, along with a handful of National League for Democracy (NLD) politicians, a few hours later but was arrested again a few days later. Since then he has been held at Insein Prison, infamous for grotesque treatment of its political prisoners.

Nay Latt’s mother wasn’t allowed into the courtroom to see her son get sentenced for a crime that she expected him to get ten to twelve years.
When he was sentenced to twenty years and six months it served as a shock to not just her but Nay’s lawyer as well.

“The blogger’s lawyer was himself jailed for criticising the special court’s procedures,” reports Reporters without Borders, who have also published that the celebrated poet Saw Wai has been sentenced to two years in prison for a poem that stated that Dictator Than Shwe is power crazy.

What does this mean for the Constitution that was rushed through regardless of Cyclone Nargis’ devastating impact on the country?
Well, a document that secures 110 out of the 440 seats for the military illustrates that the Junta are firmly in control and do planning to cave into the international pressure put on the country and the shuttle diplomacy of UN Secretary General’s Special Envoy Ibrahim Gambari.

The seemingly liberal and enlightened Constitution guarantees basic rights, such as freedom to form political parties and unions; the freedom of press; religion and the rights of minorities is a far cry from the laws used to sentence Nay Latt and Saw Wai.

With the long awaited visit of UN Secretary General, Ban Ki-Moon, pending, it is hoped that he can make some headway with a Junta determined to stonewall any progress to free Nobel Laureate Aung San Suu Kyi from her twenty years’ house arrest, let alone grant the rights enshrined in the Constitution.

With the international media and public moving onto the cause de jour, the pressure has eased off of the secretive Junta. With the first anniversary of Nargis looming it seems as though the country has been in stasis with the Military not even wishing to pay lip service to their masterpiece (the Constitution), which took nearly twenty years to compete!

According to news reports, the Communications Ministry has received more than 1,000 complaints on websites which are considered offensive to the royal family. Thailand, a constitutional monarchy, has severe lese majeste laws that have custodial sentences of between 3 to 15 years for whoever “defames, insults or threatens the king, the queen, the heir to the throne or the Regent”. However, actual prosecutions are said to be rare.

Thailand is said to be already be blocking websites, although this is executed on a case-to-case basis by Internet service providers with reference to a blacklist furnished to them by the authorities. Furthermore, a Computer Crime Act, implemented last year, gives Thai police the power to enforce censorship of the Internet, and provides penalties for circumventing the provisions of the legislation.

However, the planned gateway to monitor and block online anti-monarchy sentiments will also do the same with pornographic or terrorism-related sites, according to Communications Minister Mun Patanotai. The project has an allocation of between 100 million and 500 million baht ($2.9 million and $14.6 million).

Mun was reported to have said that his ministry will also discuss the issue with intelligence units and state telecommunications companies. He also added that more than 80% of the offending websites are based outside Thailand.

A Turkish court has blocked access to the popular blog hosting service Blogger (Blogger.com and Blogspot.com owned by Google), since Friday, October 24th, 2008. According to BasBasBas.com, a Dutch blogger based in Istanbul, who alerted us to the issue:

It is suspected that the reason for this has something to do with Adnan Oktar, by some considered the leading Muslim advocate for creationism, who has in the past managed to get Wordpress, Google Groups, as well as Richard Dawkins’ website.

Turkish Internet users are seeing this message when trying to visit Blogger.com and all blogs hosted on blogspot.com hosting service: “Access to this website has been suspended in accordance with decision no. 2008/2761 of the TR Diyarbakir First Criminal Court of Peace.”

Screenshot of the Turkish blockpage. Source: BasBasBas.com

This is the second instance of a popular blogging service being blocked in Turkey. In August 2007, the Turkish Fatih Second Civil Court of First Instance blocked access to the entire wordpress.com domain after alleged libel of Turkish Islamic-creationist, Adnan Oktar, aka Harun Yahya.

Adnan Oktar has been very harmful to the access of Turkish Netizens to the Internet. He has succeeded in getting a variety of major websites banned by court decisions. Next to these two blogging services, Adnan Oktar also filed a complaint against Google Groups, which led to the ban of the website.

Turkey also blocks access to both video-sharing websites, Youtube and Dailymotion over videos deemed insulting to the country’s founding father, Kemal Atatürk.

Slide, the maker of social networking widgets, has also been blocked by a Turkish court for “harboring pictures and articles that are considered to be insulting to Ataturk.”

Update #1 via Cyber-Rights.Org.TR:

It is now being reported by Turk.internet.com that the blocking order is related to an intellectual property infringement. Digitürk is a subscription based digital TV platform in Turkey which owns the right to transmit the live coverage of the Turkish football league games. Digitürk obtained the blocking order through the Diyarbakir court according to the Turk.internet.com news as there were blog entries providing information and links to known websites which transmit pirated transmission of the live football league games.

Update #2 via CyberLaw Blog: CyberLaw Blog reported today (October 28, 2008) that the ban on blogspot.com blogging platform has been lifted by the Diyarbakir First Criminal Court:

It is, however, unclear why the order has been lifted and it seems like the ban is lifted until Digitürk provides to the court further evidence with regards to its claims for football streaming piracy. Therefore, I would not be surprised to see the blocking order and the ban reinstated.

Alas, a growing number of nations in the West are examining the possibility of censoring sites that allegedly harm society. France and Germany are leading the way and the United States is not far behind.

We can now add Australia to the list.

The OpenNet Initiative reported this week:

Australians will be unable to opt-out of the government’s pending Internet content filtering scheme, and will instead be placed on a watered-down blacklist, experts say.

Under the government’s $125.8 million Plan for Cyber-Safety, users can switch between two blacklists which block content inappropriate for children, and a separate list which blocks illegal material.

Pundits say consumers have been lulled into believing the opt-out proviso would remove content filtering altogether.

The government will iron-out policy and implementation of the Internet content filtering software following an upcoming trial of the technology, according to the Department of Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy.

A spokesman for Communications Minister Stephen Conroy said the filters will be mandatory for all Australians.

Ever since Australia elected a new Prime Minister in late 2007, leader Kevin Rudd has openly discussed introducing such proposals (something I explained in more detail during my speech to the Global Voices Citizen Media Summit in Budapest this year.)

The primary problem with the proposal is its inefficiency and lack of flexibility (something already argued by watchers.) To make matters worse, the government has trailed this web filtering in certain states and failure was the result.

So why move forward? Leading Australian blogger on this issue, Somebody Think of the Children, says it best:

Criminals accessing child abuse websites will still be able to do so and the horrendous production and distribution of child abuse material online and off will continue. Why does the government think censors are the ones who can fix this and not law enforcement? Mandatory ISP filtering is about protecting votes, not children.

Disturbingly, the proposals have received virtually no media attention in Australia though ISPs are reportedly unsure whether to participate in the program, “depending on the nature of the trials”, according to one major player.

Vigilance on internet censorship is required across the globe, even in “democratic” nations.

This morning Mr. Peng came looking for me; I’d recommended his Missing Persons blog a while back. He’s pretty helpless, but there’s not much I can do for him. At 8:30 while we were chatting in the lobby, someone was watching us.

I gave him Liu Xiaoyuan’s phone number, thinking he’d be needing it.

An hour later, he was taken away. He’s being held at “Fuyou St. police station detainment center, across from #18 Xirongxian Hutong“. He sent me an SMS saying, “one of our parents has been beaten and is injured, I’ve been beaten too,” and “they’ve burnt some of our papers.”

The weather’s great in Beijing today, the sky’s really blue.

Peng Wenle runs a well-known blog dedicated to helping parents find their children who have been kidnapped and sold.

The Kuwait Ministry of Communications has issued an order to local ISPs denying access to Youtube due to video content considered offensive to Muslims and Islam. Here is a translation by Reuters:

Since the website displays the Koran in the form of songs sung with the oud (stringed instrument) … and displays disrespectful pictures of the Prophet Mohammad … please proceed with immediate effect in blocking the website www.youtube.com

According to Aljarida.com, Youtube users activities represent 15% of all the internet traffic in Kuwait. The Kuwait Times reports that “A search of the word ‘Kuwait’ turned up 59,000 videos [on Youtube], including everything from videos of car crashes on Fahaheel Expressway and Jessica Simpson’s concert for US troops in Kuwait to protests in front of Abdullah Al-Salem hall in the run up to the 2006 parliamentary elections.”

Youtube is being blocked in Tunisia, Turkey and Syria. See our Access Denied Map for more information about web 2.0 censorship and anti-censorships efforts.

On his blog, Gopalan had allegedly insulted Justice Belinda Ang in relation to a court matter in assessing damages in a defamation suit that Singapore Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong and Minister Mentor Lee Kuan Yew won against the Singapore Democratic Party (SDP) and its leaders.

Gopalan (pic below) had allegedly accused Justice Ang of “prostituting herself…by being nothing more than an employee of Mr Lee Kuan Yew and his son and carrying out their orders”. In his defence, Gopalan said that he hoped to raise political awareness in Singapore on his blog. He admitted that his words might have been strong, but he was not remorseful as they were true. Gopalan had represented himself in court, and was charged under Section 228 of Singapore’s Penal Code, “Intentional insult or interruption to a public servant sitting in any stage of a judicial proceeding”.

Gopalan’s sentence comes shortly after Singapore’s attorney general announced contempt of court proceedings it had filed against the publisher of the Asian edition of the Wall Street Journal and two of its editors, saying their editorials “impugn the impartiality, integrity and independence of the Singapore judiciary”.

According to Reuters, freedom of speech and expression, especially in relation to politics, race and religion, are tightly regulated in Singapore. While, the government says this is needed to maintain the country’s social and political stability, critics suggest it is misuse of the legal system.

The ISA was first enacted in 1960, ostensibly to curb the threat communism. The preamble of the Act states:

An Act to provide for the internal security of Malaysia, preventive detention, the prevention of subversion, the suppression of organized violence against persons and property in specified areas of Malaysia, and for matters incidental thereto.

Apparently, detention without trial under the ISA operates in two stages:

1. initial detention of up to 60 days upon the authority of the police
2. then a two year renewable order by the authority of the Home Minister

Detainees are apparently held in solitary confinement and denied any contact with lawyers. The notorious Operasi Lalang of 1987 was a massive crackdown on opposition leaders, academicis, religious, social and environmental activists. The 1990s saw the detention of Al-Arqam leaders, the alleged ring leaders of the Reformasi and Hindraf Movements. Click here for a list of known detainees under the Malaysian Internal Security Act 1960.

Critics have said that the government’s continued use of the ISA defeats the Government’s own claim to be subject to the rule of law, and will just give the perception that the detainees are held for their political activities.

RPK’s detentions is reported to be at the first stage, i.e under s. 73(1) of the ISA, which permits detention of an individual for up to 60 days. RPK has also been detained under the ISA in 2001 for his alleged involvement in the Reformasi (reformation) movement. He was held for 53 days at the Kamunting Detention Centre in Taiping, Perak. Opposition parties strongly condemn this move by the government.

Material on the ISA:

• Malaysian Bar
• Centre for Independent Journalism
• Human Rights Watch 1
• Human Rights Watch 2
• Gerak Malaysia – Movement for Democracy and Anti-Corruption