Ahead of Hanoi visit, Hillary Clinton urged to raise cases of imprisoned journalists and cyber-dissidents

By Tsering

Flickr Creative Commons | Sean Hobson

Reporters San Frontiers | October 29, 2010

Reporters Without Borders has written to U.S. secretary of state Hillary Clinton in advance of her visit to Hanoi on 30 October urging the United States to press the Vietnamese authorities to release imprisoned journalists and cyber-dissidents and suggesting that it should raise the cases of Le Cong Dinh, Nguyen Tien Trung and Pham Minh Hoang in particular.

Le Cong Dinh, a cyber-dissident and well-known lawyer, was sentenced to five years in prison on January 20. Nguyen Tien Trung, a blogger and pro-democracy activist, is serving a seven-year jail sentence. Their jail terms are to be followed by three years of house arrest. Both were convicted of endangering national security and “organizing campaigns in collusion with foreign-based reactionary groups aimed at overthrowing the people’s government with the Internet’s help.”

Pham Minh Hoang, a blogger (www.pkquoc.multiply.com) with French and Vietnamese dual citizenship, was formally charged on 29 September after six weeks in detention, during which his family was without any news of him. He is also accused of activities aimed at overthrowing the government. His wife says the real reason for his arrest was his opposition to bauxite mining by a Chinese company in Vietnam’s central highlands and its impact on the environment. Other journalists and bloggers who have tried to cover this subject, such as Bui Thanh Hieu, have also been arrested.

The human rights situation is getting worse in the run-up to the Communist Party congress scheduled for early next year. Vietnam nonetheless agreed to reconcile economic development with respect for its citizens’ fundamental rights when it was admitted to the World Trade Organization in 2006.

The government has been reinforcing its control over the media and Internet since last year and there has been an increase in cyber-attacks on websites critical of the government.

In her historic speech last January, Clinton very clearly affirmed U.S. support for online freedom of speech and opinion, saying the United States had a duty to defend this tool of economic and social development. Reporters Without Borders urges her to defend these principles now in her contacts with Vietnam, the world’s second-largest prison for netizens with a total of 16 cyber-dissidents and three journalists detained.

Trademark Suit Singapore’s Latest Weapon in Arsenal Against Dissent

By Tsering

Flickr Creative Commons | Shiny Things

By Paul Karl Lukacs | Jakarta Globe | October 29, 2010

The government of Singapore has revealed its new weapon against political opponents: trademark infringement lawsuits.

Singapore is synonymous with “soft authoritarianism,” a system where dissent is quashed mainly by co-option, self-censorship, gerrymandering and the strategic filing of civil lawsuits against opposition politicians.

While the Singaporean regime is not above imprisoning its critics, authorities prefer to use courtroom procedures that appear superficially to be content-neutral applications of typical laws. The island nation’s activists can expect to be sued for defamation or campaign violations, to have financially debilitating court judgments entered against them and to be barred from running for Parliament after they are forced into bankruptcy.

Now the country’s long-time rulers, the leaders of the People’s Action Party, are attempting to use trademark infringement claims to identify anonymous critics and to squelch oppositional speech. Despite the fact that the government keeps a tight leash on the mainstream media, it appears to be the first time the island republic has gone after an Internet publication.

The Temasek Review is a formidable operation. In 2009, one or more unidentified anti-PAP dissidents began publishing news, analysis and opinion on the Web site. The site’s domain name was registered by proxy, and the site indicates it operates through a business entity in Panama, far outside the jurisdiction of the Singaporean courts (in which government-backed lawsuits against political opponents have been consistently successful).

On Oct. 9, a state-aligned tabloid, The New Paper, reported that the site’s founder was Singaporean physician Joseph Ong Chor Teck. Six days later, Temasek Holdings, Singapore’s principal sovereign wealth fund, served a cease-and-desist letter on Ong.

“The purpose of this letter is to request, if you are the founder of the Web site, that the Web site stops using the good name of Temasek Review and that its name be changed,” the letter stated. The fund explained it had used the name Temasek Review since 2004 as the title of its annual report and that the Web site was “capitalizing on the good will and reputation” of the name in a manner that was “misleading and irresponsible.”

Ong, for his part, has said he was not currently involved in the site’s ownership or management, but the government-linked Temasek Holdings maintains that he is in touch with the site’s personnel and can communicate the fund’s demands to them. In response to the well-publicized letter, the independent Web site temporarily changed its title to New Temasek Review, transferred its domain name to an unidentified non-Singaporean and now appears to be publishing as normal under its original title.

There is little question that Temasek Holdings is speaking on behalf of the government. Although the fund prefers to present itself as an independent profit-seeking enterprise, Temasek is recognized as a “government company” by the Singaporean Constitution, and it is owned by the Ministry of Finance. Moreover, personnel is policy, and Tamesek is near the heart of the regime. Temasek’s chief executive is Ho Ching, the wife of Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong and the daughter-in-law of the island’s paramount leader, Lee Kuan Yew.

Although Temasek has not yet filed a lawsuit, the cease-and-desist letter indicates that a trademark infringement action is contemplated — as do certain other maneuvers by the company. And as dissidents and international press organizations have discovered, Singapore has a long history of following through with its threats of lawsuits.

A plaintiff preparing for an infringement action will often apply for registration of the disputed mark (or a similar one) in the specific fields of commerce in which the defendant is operating. Thus, it is probably not a coincidence that in November 2009 — after the Temasek Review started publication and obtained its current domain name — Temasek filed an application in the Intellectual Property Office of Singapore to register the mark Temasek Review in the fields of printed and electronic publications.

In addition, Temasek filed applications in May 2010 to register the similar mark The Temasek Report in Singapore, the European Union and the United States in the same fields of commerce. These filings certainly give the appearance of a litigant preparing its case.

That said, formal registration of a trademark is not necessary for a mark holder to prevail in court. Trademark rights accrue through use — specifically, through the public’s identification of a mark with a good or service’s source of origin — so, in common-law countries like Singapore, an unregistered mark can be protected.

Under Singaporean law — and it would be unprecedented for the government to file a lawsuit against a political opponent anywhere other than Singapore’s own courts — an unregistered mark can be protected if the good or service has an established reputation among the Singaporean public, if the defendant has made a misstatement which will confuse the public as to the source of the product, and if the plaintiff has been damaged. The fund’s cease-and-desist letters attempt to demonstrate these criteria.

In a courtroom which provided a level playing field, there would be several obvious weaknesses in Temasek’s case. Most importantly, there does not appear to be any evidence that members of the public are likely to confuse the once-a-year report of an investment firm with a continuously updated online publication that analyzes swaths of Singaporean life and politics. A “likelihood of confusion,” to use the American phrasing, is necessary to impose a judgment of trademark infringement, and it’s difficult to discern one in this situation.

The word Temasek — which, according to custom, is Old Javanese for “sea town” — is an early place name for Singapore, and geographic marks can be particularly difficult to monopolize. Courts can issue injunctions or refuse registrations if the use of a place name is misleading, but there doesn’t seem to be anything deceptive about a publication named Temasek Review which literally reviews the government and society of the island previously called Temasek.

The unmistakable trajectory of Temasek’s argument is that only the Singaporean government or one of its sub-units would be able to use the word in the title of a publication. Taken to that extent, the Singaporean government’s claimed intellectual property rights would be a cover for censorship and the bullying of competing voices out of the media marketplace.

The regime has other legal arguments it could make. It could claim that the Temasek Review mark is so famous that — like the marks Coca-Cola or Hyatt — no one could use them in any field of commerce. That’s a tough argument to make with a straight face about the name of an annual report (which appears to have been discontinued, since the fund’s 2010 report is titled Temasek Report, not Temasek Review).

The fund could ask for arbitration before the international body which administers domain names, but that would place the burden of proof on the fund to establish that the Web site had a confusingly similar name, had no legitimate interest in its name and was acting in bad faith. More to the point, a domain name arbitration would place the dispute in a neutral international forum, which the PAP has tended to avoid in political cases.

In the end, the publishers of the Web site are probably correct in stating that the agenda of the government is to identify the site’s editors so that they can be investigated and discredited. And trademark and other intellectual property claims are the newest, superficially legalistic methods the PAP will use to protect its hegemony and the privileges of its leaders.

N. Korean Propaganda Appears on Popular Internet Social Media sites

By Tsering

Flickr Creative Commons | Kok Leng Yeo

Steve Herman | Voice of America | October 2010

North Korean propaganda has emerged on popular Internet social media sites. It is not for domestic consumption as virtually no North Korean has Internet access. Rather it is targeted at other countries, especially South Korea. But in the democratic South, considered the world’s most connected country, the government blocks such content.

South Korea’s Internet censors are working harder these days to keep up with an expanding number of Web sites showing material from or sympathetic to North Korea.

South Korea blocks such sites under laws forbidding dissemination of false information or activities against the state.

Bloggers such as Kim Sang-bum, of the on-line community Bloter, which focuses on digital technology, calls the censorship an over-reaction.

“I don’t think it is necessary for our government to regulate citizens too tightly. South Koreans have become too sophisticated to fall for North Korean propaganda,” he said. “We consider that kind of propaganda as rather silly.”

South Korea’s Communications Standards Commission and the National Police Agency declined requests for interviews.

Jeon Kyoung-woong is the former director of the Korea Internet Media Association, and an on-line journalist. Jeon says pro-Pyongyang material needs to be restricted because it is not as innocuous.

“There are actually forces inside South Korea supporting the North Korean regime,” he said. “Some of them are in touch with North Korean spy groups. Thus the South Korean government sets restrictions on such on-line content.”

South Korean Internet users must register with their real names. On the most popular web sites, anyone posting comments must register with their national identity number.

“The adoption of real-name system shows that the current government is excessively sensitive about political opinion on the Internet. I think the situation has become worse since the current government came into power.”

Jeon, however, is less bothered.

“South Korean cyber police has been active for more than a decade,” said Jeon. “Recently it feels like the cyber police are becoming increasingly active but that is only because it’s being publicized by those subject to such restrictions. Political restrictions were actually tighter under the previous two governments.”

While South Koreans can freely argue about to what degree on-line content here should be regulated, that is not an option in North Korea. Only a few people there are allowed Internet access. And the country only recently established its first full connection to the Internet.

China blanks Nobel Peace prize searches

By Tsering

Flickr Creative Commons | Laihiuyeung Ryanne

By Steven Jiang | CNN World | October 8, 2010

Beijing, China (CNN) — With news media across the globe reacting to this year’s Nobel Peace Prize announcement, authorities in the winner’s homeland are racing to delete his name from all public domains.

Type “Liu Xiaobo” — or “Nobel Peace Prize,” for that matter — in search engines in China and hit return, you get a blaring error page.

It’s the same for the country’s increasingly popular micro-blogging sites. “Nobel Prize” was the top-trending topic until the authorities acted to remove all mentions of the award.

Propaganda officials have also pulled the plug on international broadcasters — including CNN — whenever stories about Liu air.

Text-messaging on mobile phones is not immune from censors, either. A Shanghai-based netizen, @littley, tweeted his unfortunate experience: “My SIM card just got de-activated, turning my iPhone to an iPod touch after I texted my dad about Liu Xiaobo winning the Nobel Peace Prize.”

For most ordinary Chinese, the only glimpse of the story came when an anchor read a short statement from the foreign ministry on state TV, blasting the Norwegian Nobel committee’s choice of an imprisoned Chinese dissident for the prize “a blasphemy.”

Chinese news consumers are no strangers to such blackouts.

The Chinese government, in its effort to control the flow of information, has long blocked some of the world’s top social networking sites – including Facebook, Youtube and most overseas-based blogging services.

Disagreements over Internet censorship led to a war of words between Beijing and Google early this year, leading the search engine giant to redirect its Chinese services to Hong Kong.

Frustrated netizens have dubbed the state’s extensive Internet filtering system the “Great Firewall of China,” which is said to employ the world’s biggest cyber police force to monitor the world’s biggest online population of more than 400 million people.

An increasing number of mostly young, tech-savvy users, however, have learned to rely on proxy servers to circumvent the censors and log on to banned sites like Twitter, where the mood was ecstatic Friday night.

“We finally have our own Mandela and Aung San Suu Kyi,” exclaimed @xieyi64.

“How come I feel today is the real National Day?” tweeted @joeliang, referring to the just-ended week-long holiday marking the 61st anniversary of the People’s Republic.

Echoing their sentiment, many Twitterers — based in China according to their profiles — admitted they have cried in joy upon hearing the news.

Others expressed admiration for the Norwegian Nobel committee for its decision despite Beijing’s stern public warning against it.

“Thanks for giving China a glimmer of hope,” tweeted @Frankus21, while many more said they paid their tribute to the Scandinavian nation by eating a celebratory dinner featuring salmon, arguably Norway’s most famous food.

With the news blackout there was also little criticism online of the Nobel award.

But some of the online enthusiasm has even spilled into the real world. A witness told CNN a small group of people gathered at Temple of Earth Park in Beijing to celebrate Liu’s winning, only to be quickly dispersed by local police.

All the excitement aside, Chinese Internet users don’t see their government loosening its grip on the media – old or new – anytime soon. They do hope, however, that their collective voice online will help push for Liu’s early release.

Liu’s wife, speaking to CNN after the announcement, certainly counts on these messengers to spread her husband’s story.

“People who want to find out the news will be able to do so,” Liu Xia told CNN under the watchful eyes of police in her apartment, when asked about China’s censoring of the story.

Using new Internet filters, Afghanistan blocks news site

By Tsering

Flickr Creative Commons | Afghanistan Matters

By Danny O’Brien with Bob Dietz | Committee to Protect Journalists | October 6, 2010

Until recently, Afghanistan’s Internet has been notably free of government censorship. That stems largely from the limited impact and visibility of the Net domestically: The Taliban banned the Internet during its rule, and despite a recent boom in use, the nation has only a million users out of a population of about 29 million. But the Afghan government finally got around to imposing national filters in June, when the Ministry of Communications instructed local ISPs to blacklist websites that promote alcohol, gambling, and pornography, or ones that provide dating and social networking services.

Afghanistan’s Internet regulators are still struggling to enforce their rules. Despite the order, the vast majority of sites violating the regulator’s code are still available. Even ostensibly blocked sites are easily viewable using straightforward proxies or circumvention software.

Yet the government has already been tempted to use the new Internet regulations for more than just defending public morals. Just three months after the introduction of the rules, the government told ISPs to include news reporting websites on their blacklists. The Wall Street Journal reported last week that the Pashto-language website Benawa had been blocked in the country after it incorrectly reported that the first vice president, Mohammed Qasim Fahim, had died. (The site corrected the error within a half hour.) The site is available on its U.S.-based servers, but Benawa‘s U.S.-based owner and manager Khalid Hadi told CPJ: “Our site is now banned on 97 percent of ISP servers in Afghanistan, and the Afghan government says the ban will stay indefinitely.” Understandably, Hadi is angry about being pushed off Afghan servers.

There are also reports that a ban is being sought for another Pashto news site, Tolafghan.

That Internet censorship spreads beyond its initial targets should not come as a surprise. And monitoring Internet censorship poses unique problems. Unlike blacklists of books or individuals, blacklists of websites are rarely published, because providing such a list is assumed to effectively give citizens a roadmap for bypassing the flimsy defenses of a national firewall. And without such a transparent list of who is being blocked, public oversight is difficult, even in countries with strong rule of law.

Meanwhile administrations concerned by the reporting of a free press will, as apparently they did in Afghanistan, reach for filtering technology as a weapon in silencing critical voices online. Independent media aren’t the only ones who find themselves at risk. This week, The New York Times reported that after years of blocking news sites and social networking forums, Iran has begun blocking the websites of domestic prominent clerics.

Online and off, journalists are among the first to be censored. But they are rarely the last.

Web Tastes Freedom Inside Syria, and It’s Bitter

By Tsering

Flickr Creative Commons | turkletom

By Robert F. Worth | New York Times | September 29, 2010 

DAMASCUS, Syria — Earlier this month, a graphic video of teachers beating their young students appeared on Facebook. Although Facebook is officially banned here, the video quickly went viral, with Syrian bloggers stoking public anger until the story was picked up by the pan-Arab media. 

Finally, the Education Ministry issued a statement saying the teachers had been reassigned to desk jobs. The episode was a rare example of the way Syrians using Facebook and blogs can win a tenuous measure of freedom within the country’s tightly controlled media scene, where any criticism of the government, however oblique, can lead to years in prison. 

“We have a little bit of freedom,” said Khaled al-Ekhetyar, a 29-year-old journalist for a Web site whose business card shows a face with hands covering up the eyes and mouth. “We can say things that can’t be said in print.” 

But that slim margin is threatened by an ever present fog of fear and intimidation, and some journalists fear that it could soon be snuffed out. A draft law regulating online media would clamp down on Syrian bloggers and other journalists, forcing them to register as syndicate members and submit their writing for review. Other Arab countries regularly jail journalists who express dissident views, but Syria may be the most restrictive of all. 

Most of the Syrian media is still owned by the state. Privately owned media outlets became legal in 2001, as the socialist economy slowly began to liberalize following the accession of President Bashar al-Assad. But much of the sector is owned by members of the Syrian “oligarchy” — relatives of Mr. Assad and other top government officials. All of it is subject to intimidation and heavy-handed control. 

“The first level is censorship,” said Ayman Abdel Nour, the founder of All4Syria.info, the independent Web site where Mr. Ekhetyar works. “The second level is when they send you statements and force you to publish them.” Like many other journalists and dissidents, Mr. Abdel Nour has left the country and now lives abroad. 

The basic “red lines” are well known: no criticism of the president and his family or the security services, no touching delicate issues like Syria’s Kurdish minority or the Alawites, a religious minority to which Mr. Assad belongs. Foreign journalists who violate these rules are regularly banned from the country (a fact that constrains coverage of Syria in this and other newspapers). 

But the exact extent of what is forbidden is left deliberately unclear, and that vagueness encourages fear and self-censorship, many journalists here say. A 19-year-old female high school student and blogger, Tal al-Mallohi, was arrested late last year and remains in prison. Her blog had encouraged the Syrian government to do more for the Palestinians, but it scarcely amounted to real criticism, and the authorities have not given any reason for her detention. A number of bloggers have been arrested for expressing views deemed critical of the Syrian government or even other Arab governments, under longstanding laws that criminalize “weakening national sentiment” and other broadly defined offenses. 

Others have been jailed for jokes. One blogger, Osama Kario, wrote a parody in 2007 of the famous “three Arab No’s” refusing any concession to Israel (no peace with Israel, no negotiations with Israel, no recognition of Israel). His version: “No electricity, no water, no Internet.” He was jailed for 28 days, and when he emerged he stopped blogging and would not speak to fellow journalists about his experience. 

Television and radio journalists have made some tentative efforts to push the limits in the past few years, with mixed success. D.J.’s like Honey Sayed, who hosts a popular show called “Good Morning Syria” on Madina FM, often explore sensitive social issues like homosexuality and child abuse. Last year Orient TV, a new station owned by an independent Syrian businessman, began broadcasting from Dubai and quickly gained a large audience with its imaginative documentaries. But a few months later the station’s Damascus office was abruptly shut down, with no explanation given. 

One Web site, All4Syria.info, has managed to survive since 2004 with a revolving staff of about half a dozen writers based in Syria. Earlier this year it published an interview with three political dissidents on their release from prison, something no other Syrian outlet dared to do. 

“The Internet in Syria is a bit like the samizdat publications were under the Soviet Union,” said Mohammad Ali Abdallah, whose brother Omar Ali Abdallah was sentenced to five years in prison in 2006 for contributing to an Internet forum that was deemed seditious by the authorities. 

Last year, some of Syria’s new, privately owned radio stations joined bloggers in criticizing a proposed revision of Syria’s personal status law that would have made it legal for men to marry girls as young as 13 years old. Under pressure, lawmakers abandoned the proposal. 

But individual successes do not always make for broader progress, because of fear. 

“Even when someone successfully crosses a line, everyone is still afraid, they don’t build on it,” Mr. Ekhetyar said. “They think maybe it was a coincidence.” 

Many online journalists use pseudonyms, he added, a practice that may be safer but erodes their credibility and leaves them in a fearful solitude where they cannot develop professional standards. Facebook has been an important outlet for political and social frustrations, but it, too, is often used with furtive anonymity. 

And it is impossible to tell how many Syrians are paying attention. Asked who his audience was, Mr. Ekhetyar paused and said with a weary smile, “My friends and the secret police.” 

That may be why the Syrian authorities, despite the official ban on Facebook, YouTube, and many other Internet venues, do not seem too frightened of them. Most Syrian government officials, including the president, have their own Facebook pages. Walk into almost any of the many Internet cafes in Damascus, and the manager will show you how to log on to Facebook or other banned sites. Foreign proxy server numbers are traded among young people like baseball cards. 

On a recent evening in the tumultuous Bab Touma section of Damascus’s Old City, 26-year-old Berj Agop was among a crowd of young people at the SpotNet Internet Cafe, many of them casually surfing sites that are officially banned. 

“I saw the video of the teacher beating the student,” he said. “It’s a victory for sure; without Facebook no one would have known about that incident.” 

But nearby, another young man who gave his name only as Taym offered a different view. 

“The Internet is like a baby’s lollipop for the young,” he said. “It entertains him and makes him forget his problems, it’s like ‘Alice in Wonderland’ — I dream of such a world, a better world.” 

Hwaida Saad contributed reporting from Damascus.

Political website director released on bail

By Tsering

Flickr Creative Commons | Tim Parkinson

By Achara Ashayagachat | Bangkok Post | September 26, 2010

The director of political news website Prachatai.com has been released on bail as media freedom activists blasted authorities over her arrest on charges of violating the Computer Crime Act and committing lese majeste.

Chiranuch Premchaiporn, 43, who was detained by police at Suvarnabhumi airport on Friday upon her return from a conference in Hungary on media freedom, was granted bail about 1am yesterday.

Bail of 200,000 baht in cash was paid on her behalf and she was released on condition she report to the Khon Kaen Muang district police station – where she was taken for questioning after her arrest – on Oct 24.

She faces charges of lese majeste and violating the Computer Crime Act for allegedly disseminating content deemed insulting to the monarchy through Prachatai.com.

Chatpong Pongsuwan, the Khon Kaen police investigator overseeing the case, said on Friday that an individual whose identity was not disclosed had lodged a complaint against Ms Chiranuch in 2008.

Supinya Klangnarong, coordinator of the Thai Netizen Network, said she believed Ms Chiranuch’s arrest would draw international attention to the deteriorating state of media freedom in Thailand.

Thai Journalists Association president Prasong Lertratanawisute said he was concerned that proper procedure had not been observed in Ms Chiranuch’s case. He said his association has been calling for a review of the Computer Crime Act for the past few years.

Ubonrat Siriyuwasak, a journalism academic, said Ms Chiranuch’s arrest was not conducive to the “government-sponsored media reform atmosphere”, referring to the Abhisit government’s campaign to reform the media as part of national reconciliation efforts.

Ms Ubonrat said the government had exploited media technology for its own political purposes, yet it wanted to prevent Thailand’s online society from becoming vibrant and healthy for fear of a backlash.

There were efforts to curb free speech rather than promote and protect an open atmosphere for political discussions in cyberspace, she said.

Amnesty International yesterday released a statement condemning Ms Chiranuch’s arrest.

“The Thai government has frequently used the 2007 Computer-related Crimes Act to uphold the country’s lese majeste law in a growing trend of censorship to silence peaceful political dissent,” the statement said.

“The lese majeste law goes beyond reasonable restrictions on freedom of expression provided for under international human rights law.”

The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) also condemned Ms Chiranuch’s arrest. Shawn Crispin, its senior Southeast Asia representative, said the government should stop using anti-monarchy charges to suppress legitimate criticism.

Ms Chiranuch was arrested on March 6 last year when police raided Prachatai’s Bangkok news office and seized computer equipment.

She was later released on bail, but remains involved in court proceedings over comments allegedly critical of a member of the royal family posted on one of Prachatai’s discussion forums.

The latest charges against Ms Chiranuch come amid an intensifying crackdown on Thai media, according to CPJ research.

Since imposing a state of emergency on April 7, the Abhisit government has closed a satellite television news station, community radio stations, print publications and websites aligned with the anti-government United Front for Democracy against Dictatorship movement, said the CPJ.

Russia’s blogging revolution

By Tsering

Flickr Creative Commons | Howard Lifshitz

By Alexey Kovalev | The Guardian | September 24, 2010

Artyom Tiunov, a 25-year-old architect from Novosibirsk, was recently detained by Russian police on suspicion of theft and subjected to 14 hours of brutal interrogation. The police hoped he would confess to a crime he didn’t commit. They hoped he would provide them with an open-and-shut case; every police department has to present a certain number of these in a given a period or be subjected to severe questioning over their low clear-up rate. This pressure has become a major source of the abuse and corruption which everybody, including the police themselves, hopes to see off in the reforms scheduled for 2012-13..

But instead the police had to release Tiunov after being confronted with CCTV footage of him exiting a restaurant at the time of the alleged crime. Tiunov described the whole ordeal on his Livejournal.com page – a blogging platform massively popular in Russia ,hosting over 1.5 million Russian-language blogs – and the post, titled “Wrong place, wrong time”, attracted more than 1,000 comments in just two days. But instead of going to a protest rally against police brutality – not effective enough, he says – he continues to blog about his confrontation with the police over his unlawful detention and files complaints and requests for investigation.

The online outrage is gaining momentum and the whole case is now too public to be ignored by the authorities or mainstream media. Tiunov says he saw the chief of the police department that had detained him clutch a printed-out blogpost with all the outraged comments – which means that they are well aware of the public attention the case is receiving. However, he remains calmly realistic: “He didn’t seem scared or concerned. The chance that the online hype will make them more courteous towards detainees or at least more cautious is measly. But that doesn’t mean I’ll stop trying. And everybody should do the same, then it’ll start to change”.

Tiunov seems to be one of a new breed of Russian dissenter: a young, smart, iPhone-wielding professional, tech-savvy enough to understand the power of the internet and to use it to his advantage. He may not have any political persuasion at all, but when he runs into trouble with the state’s institutions, he won’t be attending a political demonstration and risk being batoned or arrested. He knows exactly how to generate enough hype to make his case public, and the online environment seems to be quite encouraging of his actions. Many have noted the curious absence of censorship on the Russian-speaking internet which largely remains a free-for-all zone, quite unlike traditional media which are kept on a tight leash, as demonstrated by the recent simultaneous smear campaigns against Moscow’s rebellious mayor Yuri Luzhkov, and neighbouring post-Soviet countries where bloggers are intimidated and opposition websites shut down on a regular basis.

For example, the owner of @KermlinRussia, a spoof of Dmitry Medvedev’s official Twitter account spewing out sarcastic parodies of the president’s every tweet, says he hasn’t been contacted by anyone from the real Kremlin with any cease-and-desist demands, which suggests that Medvedev himself might actually enjoy a bit of good internet comedy (although his own tweets are snore-inducingly tedious). Or it’s a case of “won’t dignify with a response” – we can’t know for sure. In any case, jokes, cartoons and Photoshopped images of both Medvedev and Putin – often quite venomous – abound in Runet, and none of their authors have been under any pressure to take them down.

Yes, some are being prosecuted for bitter online remarks and servers confiscated, and some pro-Kremlin politicians call for censorship crudely disguised as “security measures“, but apart from several isolated and widely publicised cases Runet seems to remain virtually free from state control. Google Transparency Report doesn’t list a single data or removal request from Russia – unlike, for example, a staggering 4,287 from the USA. 

Instead, Edinaya Rossiya (United Russia), the ruling party, employs a different strategy. Recently, it proudly announced the start of Project Blogosphere aimed at “political domination through direct communication with voters in social networks and online debates”, or, in normal-speak, pro-active propaganda rather than suppression. That, however, is proving to be a risky strategy: older politicians, encouraged to start their own blog, rely on their assistants to generate Soviet-style triumphalist reports with little to no actual feedback, while younger, more active members of Edinaya Rossiya have caused some major PR blunders for the party, much to the amusement of the online population.

For example, during the recent wildfire crisis, Ruslan Gattarov and Vladimir Burmatov, two senior members of ER’s youth wing (Molodaya Gvardiya, The Young Guard of United Russia), tried to use the disaster for their own political gain. They assembled a volunteer firefighting team, dressed them in party colours and went on to extinguish a fire in a forest several hundred kilometres from Moscow, all the while tweeting and posing for photographs with flags and party logos in the foreground.

What they didn’t realise was that their every move, tweet and photo was being meticulously analysed by the very people they hoped to impress and “dominate” – the bloggers. Soon a detailed blogpost appeared dismissing Gattarov and Burmatov’s proud reports as fake: their clothes looked far too clean for a messy operation like forest firefighting, and the area in question wasn’t even on fire. As it turned out, they simply set a bush on fire and photographed themselves putting it out to boast the party’s active involvement in the firefighting operation. Outrage ensued, much to the embarrassment of both the Young Guard and the party.

These are just a few examples of how the internet promotes transparency in Russia and accountability of those in power. We can’t know for sure whether it’s due to the government’s inherited inertia and reliance on old-fashioned top-down management, or whether this lax attitude towards online content is a genuine sign of democratisation. But please blog on.

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.

Microsoft to offer free software to Russian NGOs: official

By Tsering

Flickr Creative Commons | Howard Lifshitz

AFP | September 15, 2010

MOSCOW — Microsoft on Wednesday said it would supply free software to Russian nongovernmental organisations after a media report that the US software giant was aiding Russian police in stifling dissent.

The New York Times said earlier this month that Russian authorities had used a crackdown on pirated Microsoft software as a pretext to confiscate computers and harass non-governmental organisations (NGOs).

Lawyers retained by Microsoft backed police during their raids on several occasions, it said.

After the report the company condemned the Russian authorities’ practice of using anti-piracy laws to put pressure on NGOs and said it would ensure that Russian NGOs have free software.

“We are preparing a programme of free software for NGOs and for some media,” a spokeswoman for Microsoft’s Moscow office, Irina Meshkova, told AFP.

“We will announce the list and the selection criteria later, as well as the timescale for this decision to come into force,” she added.

In January, police raided the office of Russian NGO Baikal Environmental Wave, saying that they were searching for pirated Microsoft software, the New York Times reported.

Police confiscated computers in the operation against the campaign group, which opposes the government-authorised reopening of a paper factory on the banks of pristine Lake Baikal in Siberia

On Monday, Microsoft senior vice president Brad Smith said in a blog post that the company would draw up a new software licence for NGOs that would provide them with free, legal software.

“We’re creating in Russia a new NGO Legal Assistance Program focused specifically on helping NGOs document to the authorities that this new software license proves that they have legal software,” he said.

Microsoft estimated last year that it loses around one billion dollars per year from piracy in Russia.