Arab Spring– and the Long Winter Ahead

By Nicole

Flickr Creative Commons| chris.corwin|

By Alison Craiglow Hockenberry| Huffington Post |August 16, 2011|

For all the debate about whether this is the year of the Twitter revolution and the Facebook riots, the much more interesting question is: What is not happening on the giant social media websites of the world?

The answer is: A lot.

About two billion people have been touched by the Internet revolution. The connections they have made, information they have exchanged, and actions they have taken are undeniably revolutionary and immeasurably profound. But Facebook and Twitter, for all their power to speed a new era of openness, can’t do it all.

While we celebrate the fact that two billion people now have access to the Internet’s opportunities for speaking out, five billion others are still waiting for their chance to be heard.

In sub-Saharan Africa, for example, there are countries with regimes every bit as repressive as those we hear about daily in the Middle East, in which Internet penetration is only about one percent.

This dismal rate is due to many factors, including the lack of cable and electrical infrastructure, a prohibitively-high cost of service, language barriers, and illiteracy. The region’s more readily-available mobile phones allow some information access, but sharing one’s own views and interacting over social media is not practical on a non-smart phone and in places where languages are not digitized.

Globally, there is another group without a strong enough voice: women. In much of the world where home Internet connections are prohibitively expensive, Internet communication happens mostly in cyber cafes. In regions where women are not allowed or not comfortable going to these public gathering places, it’s mostly men doing the blogging. This is a vastly unbalanced situation.

“If we want a world that is more just and more representative and involves more perspectives and more voices, and has more fairness for more people, then let’s build it,” said Ethan Zuckerman, who was recently named director of MIT’s Center for Civic Media. The big question is, he said, “How do we get our technologies to do what we want them to?”

In Afghanistan, for example, the Jalalabad-based FabLab develops locally-designed tech solutions from start to finish that address communications challenges specific to the country. Among other things, the organization aims to keep information flowing across Afghanistan despite sketchy infrastructure and a fluid political and security situation. FabLab is an initiative of MIT; there are FabLab workshops around the world.

Mizzima News Agency trains the passionate storytellers of Burma’s emerging democracy to create engaging, well-crafted narratives out of their citizen journalist impulses. Mizzima recognizes that in a country long under the grip of censorship, factual, compelling journalism of the kind that can engage citizens and hold the government accountable is a skill that needs to be developed. Citizen media cannot be the only source of checks and balances.

FreedomBox aims to confront the privacy risks associated with communicating over huge, easily-tapped networks by building simple, low-wattage devices that put privacy controls squarely in the hands of users. “We integrate privacy protection on a cheap plug server so everybody can have privacy,” explained James Vasile, FreedomBox counsel. “Data stays in your home and can’t be mined by governments, billionaires, thugs, or even gossipy neighbors.”

Mizzima, FreedomBox, and many other brilliant ideas can be found among the entrants in Citizen Media, a Google-sponsored online competition with Ashoka Changemakers. The global competition welcomes innovations that “catalyze full information citizenship… to engage freely and powerfully with information to advance their own lives and society.”

The competition seeks not only tools for increasing access to information and avenues for expression, but also to solve other challenges of a more open world, including: How to figure out what sources to trust, how to get other people to care about a story, how to share ideas efficiently and effectively and ensure people’s exposure to a diversity of opinion, and how to sift through the ever-growing supply of information.

These grass roots approaches may be the key to opening access to free expression to more and more people — especially those in the “Long Tail” — in rural and marginalized communities. The solutions may overcome the challenges of infrastructure requirements, expense, and cultural barriers that have left people totally unconnected, especially in places where the profit-potential hasn’t been attractive to investors.

“Free expression is a universal value,” said Jillian York, director of International Freedom of Expression at the Electronic Frontier Foundation. A universal value that’s not nearly yet experienced universally. You can help change that. If you have or know of a solution for creating a more engaged global citizenry through boosting media access, you have until September 14 to enter and vie for $5,000 and a chance to become an Ashoka Fellow, part of the world’s leading network of systems-changing social entrepreneurs.

First Egyptian Blogger Imprisoned for Writings is Released

By Tsering

Flickr Creative Commons | John Ward

By Courtney C. Radsch | Huffington Post (Blog) | November 22, 2010

Kareem Amer, the first Egyptian blogger to be prosecuted for the content of his writings, was released Tuesday after serving a four-year sentence for defaming Islam and President Hosni Mubarak. His sentence expired Nov. 5, but upon being released he was immediately re-arrested, pretty par for the course in terms of Egypt’s approach to dealing with its ‘problematic’ bloggers and digital activists.

Amer was a student at Al Azhar University studying law and growing increasingly disillusioned with his religion and his government. The 24-year-old started his blog in April 2005, in the height of the Kefaya movement, the genesis of cyberactivism and in the midst of a series of protests against constitutional amendments and for the independence of the judiciary.

“I am down to earth Law student; I look forward to help humanity against all form of discriminations,” Kareem wrote in his Blogger profile. “I am looking forward to open up my own human rights activists Law firm, which will include other lawyers who share the same views. Our main goal is to defend the rights of Muslim and Arabic women against all form of discrimination and to stop violent crimes committed on a daily basis in these countries.”

Kareem traversed red lines on his blog, including criticizing Islam and Christianity, assailing the Egyptian regime including Mubarak, and attacking Al Azhar University and his professors there by name. In March, 2005 he was subjected to disciplinary hearings at Al Azhar, which he chronicled on his blog, labeling them an “inquisition” by a “repressive” institution. According to one fellow blogger I interviewed in Egypt for my doctoral research on digital activism, Kareem would print out hard copies of his posts and distribute it, like a newspaper, to people walking down the street. Although laws specific to Internet publishing were not yet in place in 2005, Kareem’s translation of electronic materials to hard copy printed materials meant he could be prosecuted under existing libel and defamation laws. Nov. 6 became the first time a blogger was explicitly arrested for the content of his writing rather than his activism in the streets.

His first arrest came on Oct. 25, 2005 after he posted an entry entitled “The naked truth about Islam as I saw it in Maharram Beh.” Three weeks later he was released, only to be arrested again on Nov. 6. By the next day the Arabic Network for Human Rights Information (ANHRI), which had positioned itself as a leading defender of freedom of expression and essential monitoring organization that became a leading reference on cyberactivism and regime response for journalists and NGOs around the world.

Two days after Kareem’s arrest the pan-Arab Al Quds al Arabi published a piece on detention followed the next day by a piece on the emerging global activist & citizen journalist network Global Voices. Reporters Without Borders issued a press release on his detention and an article appeared in the popular liberal Arabic website Elaph. By the end of January nearly every major media outlet in the English-speaking world and beyond had published articles about his case, including the BBC, CNN, Al Jazeera English, the Associated Press, Le Monde, and The Guardian, to name a few.

A bi-partisan letter by two members of the US Congress demanding Kareem’s release was the first of many high-level governmental interventions around the world, from Italy to Sweden to the United Nations. The US State Department expressed its concern and his case was mentioned in Egypt’s Universal Periodic Review at the UN Human Rights Council. Kareem became a cause célèbre of internet freedom and freedom of expression, garnering mention in the reports of every major human rights organization from Reporters Sans Frontieres (RSF), the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) to Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and Freedom House. In 2007 Index on Censorship bestowed its annual Freedom of Expression award on Kareem.

Perhaps more interesting, however, was the widespread support he received from fellow bloggers from across the political and religious spectrum. The self-proclaimed “cynical, snarky, pro-US, secular, libertarian, disgruntled” blogger who blogged pseudonymously under the moniker Sandmonkey came to his defense as did the Muslim Brotherhood’s first, and most famous, blogger Abdel Menem Mahmoud (Ana Ikhwan). Manal and Alaa’s joint blog Manalaa’s Bit Bucket featured the campaign and “Free Kareem” banners appeared on blogs throughout the Arab world and beyond. The rallying effect sparked by Kareem’s arrest was a powerful message to the Egyptian government and its autocratic neighbors that there was widespread support among the activist youth for freedom of expression as a fundamental right, even if the views expressed are repugnant or offensive. It was also a clarion call to the West that there were youth show shared the same values and desires as their counterparts in more open societies. Free speech, it turned out, was the common denominator that connected bloggers of all stripes and trampling on that right put them all at risk. Today the blogosphere is more diffuse and diverse than it was when the Free Kareem campaign launched.

A chronology of press, NGO and governmental attention to Kareem’s case compiled by the FreeKareem.org campaign shows that from the day of his arrest through mid-2008 there was sustained engagement on his case on a near weekly basis. Yet despite the efforts of Egypt’s most seasoned digital activists, a global online campaign that spanned continents and languages, the global media’s attention and engagement on the issue, condemnation by Western governments, and the sustained engagement of human rights and journalist rights organizations, Kareem served his four-year prison sentence. He was not released early. The Egyptian government did not bend to international pressure. And the extensive mobilization in support of his cause did little to impact Kareem’s imprisonment, although it likely prevented him from being treated more harshly, as is all to common in Egyptian prisons. Of course the by product of keeping Kareem in jail for the past four years is that the Egyptian government has remained under scrutiny for its treatment of its citizens, and especially of cyberactivists and other human rights defenders. But this likely would have been the case even without Kareem’s compelling story, leaving me to wonder whether the past four years were merely a simulacrum of effective activism.

World’s youngest detained blogger on trial in northern Iran

By Tsering

Flickr Creative Commons | Sean Hobson

Reporters Without Borders | November 18, 2010

The world’s youngest detained blogger, 18-year-old Navid Mohebbi, is currently being tried behind closed doors before a revolutionary court in the northern city of Amol. His lawyer is not being allowed to attend the trial, which began on 14 November.

Arrested at his home in Amol on 18 September by eight intelligence ministry officials, Mohebbi is facing the possibility of a long prison sentence. A women’s rights activist who keeps a blog called “The writings of Navid Mohebbi” (http://navidmohebbi3.blogfa.com/), he had been summoned and questioned several times by various intelligence services in the past year. He was beaten at the moment of his arrest and has been held in cell with ordinary offenders ever since.

Mohebbi has been accused of “activities contrary to national security” and “insulting the Islamic Republic’s founder and current leader (…) by means of foreign media.” He has also been accused of being member of the “One Million Signatures” movement, a campaign to collect signatures to a petition for changes to laws that discriminate against women.

One the movement’s leaders, Sussan Tahmassebi, who edits the English-language version of the “Change for Equality” website, received the Alison Des Forges award from Human Rights Watch on 16 November for her activities of behalf of human rights.

She told Reporters Without Borders: “I dedicate this prize to all the human rights activists and women’s rights activists in Iran, especially those who are currently in prison, hoping to be freed soon. This prize will given them encouragement.”

Mohebbi’s case is not isolated. Many Iranian netizens have been arrested, prosecuted or convicted. Ten of them are currently in prison in Iran. One of the detained bloggers is Ahmad Reza Ahmadpour, a cleric and editor of the “Silent Echo” website (http://www.pejvak-kh.com), who has been held since 27 December 2009 in the religious city of Qom.

He is serving a one-year sentence on charges of “disseminating false information attacking the government” and “discrediting the Shiite clergy.” He went on hunger strike last year in protest against his prison conditions and sent an open to UN secretary-general Ban Ki-moon.

Until Mohebbi’s arrest, the world’s youngest blogger in detention was the Syrian high school student Tal Al-Mallouhi, who was 18 when she was arrested on 27 December 2009 after responding to a summons from a Syrian intelligence agency. She is still being held by the intelligence agency although no charge has so far been brought against her.

Iranian prosecutors demand death penalty for ‘blogfather’

By Tsering

Flickr Creative Commons | Joi Ito

By Richard Spencer | The Guardian | September 23, 2010

Hossein Derakhshan, 35, who has both Iranian and Canadian nationality, won his nickname after developing a blog platform for Persian characters that was widely copied by online activists and commentators.

While living in Canada and Britain he became known as a defender of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Iran’s president, against attacks from his many critics in the West. But he also went on a one-man peace mission to Israel, trying to show an Israeli perspective on conflicts in the Middle East to Iranians and also to “humanise” Iranians for his hosts.

He was arrested within weeks of his voluntary return to Iran in 2008. His alleged offences include working with “hostile” governments, propaganda against the Islamic establishment, propaganda in favour of anti-revolutionary groups, and insulting religious sanctities.

An anonymous source told Radio Free Europe that the trial had taken place behind closed doors and that although no sentence had yet been handed down, the prosecutor had sought the death penalty.

His mother, Ozra Kiarashpour, has confirmed that he has been convicted. “The prosecutor has asked for the severest sentence possible to punish Hossein and make an example of him,” she said in an interview with a dissident website. “We can’t do anything about the judge’s ruling except to pray.”

A death penalty would be unusual although writers and dissidents have been sentenced to lengthy jail terms. In the last week, two dissident journalists have been sentenced to six years’ jail on similar charges, one for an interview he conducted for the BBC Persian service. Exile groups say that capital punishment is increasingly being sought against those accused of “mohareb”, or offending God and his prophet.

Mr Derakhshan’s family speculates that he might have been victim of a power struggle in the country’s ruling conservative faction, given that he was arrested so soon after praising the regime. He had also received a guarantee from the High Council of Iranian Affairs Abroad that he would be safe if he returned.

On his return, he made a Twitter comment that he “loved being in Iran” and was “generally impressed”. Previously, he had defended Iran’s right to develop nuclear weapons in self-defence, saying he would defend the country against any military assault.

But he also offended the authorities by tackling pro-reform issues, and on a previous visit home had been arrested and made to apologise for telling readers in Iran how to get round internet censorship.

Cuban blogger Sanchez calls media prize a ‘shield’

By Tsering

Flickr Creative Commons | Jared Tarbell

AFP | September 5, 2010

HAVANA — Cuban blogger Yoani Sanchez said winning the media watchdog IPI prize of World Press Freedom Hero is a “protective shield” that will help her break “the wall of censorship,” she told AFP Sunday.

“For someone who three years ago started opening cracks in the walls of censorship, my first feeling is that of enormous gratification,” Sanchez said of the award she was given Friday.

The recognition from the Vienna-based International Press Institute, which hailed her defiance of press restrictions and commitment to free speech, is “also a shield to keep daring” to put out news from the closeted Communist isle.

Sanchez began her blog Generation Y, which now counts over one million readers, in 2007. However, access to the site was banned in Cuba in 2008.

To bypass this, Sanchez, who celebrated her 35th birthday Saturday, emails her comments to friends abroad who post her notes on the Internet.`

In 2008, Time Magazine in the United States named her one of the 100 most influential people. The following year, her blog was listed as one of the 25 best blogs of the year by the magazine.

The future of Cuba is “where the power of the Internet can be used to promote freedom of expression,” Sanchez told AFP, adding that the IPI prize was an additional “incentive” to keep going.

“Gradually the circle of censorship is in the process of breaking down. I am very happy. I will continue,” she said.

Alison Bethel McKenzie, director of the Vienna-based International Press Institute, said Friday that Sanchez’s “tremendously important work provides a glimpse into what is otherwise a closed world.”

She “represents a future where the power of the Internet can be harnessed to promote free speech,” McKenzie said in a statement.

Harassed and beaten on separate occasions, Sanchez has noted on her blog that she is constantly watched by state security agents.

But she refuses to stop writing: “If you are insulted by the mediocre, the opportunists, if you are slandered by the employees of the powerful but dying machinery, take it as a compliment,” she has written.

China’s star blogger treads fine line

By Tsering

Flickr Creative Commons | Scott Chang

By Polly Hui | AFP | July 23, 2010

HONG KONG — China’s most popular blogger recalls being baffled when a publisher told him he could not run an article because it mentioned a person ordering a dish of lamb.

“I did not get it. What’s wrong with eating lamb?” Han Han says.

The publisher explained that by ordering lamb, the diner could be someone who did not eat pork.

And that could imply he was a Muslim — a particularly sensitive subject in China following deadly ethnic unrest in Xinjiang last year that pitted mostly Muslim Uighurs against the nation’s dominant Han group.

The 27-year-old high school drop-out and champion amateur race-car driver said he was frustrated that self-censorship by mainland publishers was often more stringent than the authorities themselves.

“I wish there was a law saying clearly what can be done and what can’t be. I wish we could lay all the issues on the table and discuss frankly about them.”

Han, famous for his witty, scathing critiques of China’s corrupt officials and social issues, has achieved phenomenal fame in the country’s tightly monitored cyberspace.

He has accumulated more than 300 million hits on his blog, making it the most popular in China — and probably the world.

A top-earning author with a dozen titles under his belt, Han was named by TIME magazine as among the world’s 100 most influential people, grouping him alongside US President Barack Obama and pop star Lady Gaga.

He said he had also recently rejected an invitation to promote a commercial product on his blog with the reward of 10,000 yuan (1,500 US dollars) for each word he writes — with no word limit.

“Some people are beneficiaries of a flawed judicial system. Some are beneficiaries of a chaotic society. I just happen to have benefited from telling the truth,” he recently told reporters at the Hong Kong Book Fair.

Han conceded that technological advances have played a vital role in his success.

“In the Internet era, once an article is posted online, there is nothing one can do to deny its existence,” Han said, referring to the fact that his readers always managed to copy contentious articles from his blog to their own sites — before they were taken down by China’s Internet police.

Before the launch of his popular literature-themed magazine “Party” this month, Han said he spent time and money consulting different publishers in the futile hope of preserving the articles in their original form.

“It is about making compromise all the time,” he said. “I still had to follow the rules because I wanted the magazine to be a legal publication.”

All 500,000 copies of the bi-monthly’s first issue, which included articles by other writers, sold out just four days after its release, government newspaper China Daily reported, smashing sales records.

For many, Han is the unofficial voice for China’s “Post 80s”, a generation born into the country’s economic boom who are typically regarded as spoilt as the single child in the family, apolitical, rebellious and status-obsessed.

Han shot to fame in 2000 after he published “The Triple Gate”, a novel based on his own experience as a school drop-out in Shanghai that mocked China’s rigid education system.

He has criticised China’s “underground Internet commentators” — hired by the government to skew public opinion by posting comments online favourable to the authorities.

The blogger also likes to ridicule officials’ conservative and outmoded approach to handling crises.

“Sometimes, the incident itself was not a big deal. But it was blown up by the government officials themselves,” he said.

After a man stabbed 32 people — mostly small children — at a kindergarten in eastern China in April, he wrote: “By controlling the media, prohibiting hospital visits, diverting attention, the (local) government managed to re-direct people’s anger towards the killer to the government itself.”

Despite his bravado, some critics have pointed out that Han has always been careful not to challenge the one-party rule of the Communist Party.

Han himself admits that he abides by the rigid — if unwritten — rules to ensure that his voice continues to be heard.

Asked about his views on the crackdown on the 1989 pro-democracy protests in Tiananmen Square, he changed subject.

“I fell in love with this girl in the mainland a few days ago,” he said.

“She’s worried that if I said anything anti-government, I won’t be allowed back to China.”