The alleged arrest has been in discussed at Jamii Forum, a popular Tanzanian Online Forum, since yesterday. And today, Swahili Time has posted the news along with a picture of the arrested blogger, Malecela Peter Lusinde, 39, an IT consultant from Essex in the UK.

Swahili Time reports that Tanzania’s police in cooperation with their UK counterparts have collected enough evidence to conclude that Lusinde is the owner of Ze Utamu Blog which was blocked in February after publishing manipulated photographic images depicting Tanzania’s President Jakaya Kikwete engaging in lewd sex acts.

Legal aspects of the arrest are not yet clear. Tanzania does not allow dual citizenship and since Mr Lusinde is a UK citizen of Tanzanian origin, it is not yet known under which law Lusinde will be charged. The post in the Swahili Times says:

Habari zilizothibitishwa zinadai kuwa Ndg Malecela amerudishwa Tanzania kwenda kujibu tuhuma mbalimbali za kuendesha mtandao uliokuwa unadhalilisha watu,kuna malalamiko 6850 yaliyoandikishwa kulaumu udhalilishwaji wa watu uliofanywa na mtandao huo […]

Haijaeleweka wazi Ndg Malecela atashitakiwa kwa sheria gani? Lakini ni wazi kwamba atashitakiwa Nchini Tanzania.Licha ya Ndg. Malecela Polisi wa Upelelezi wamezungumza na Watanzania wengine wawili katika miji ya Wichita na San Diego Nchini Marekani,ambao pia wanahusishwa na Mtandao huo wa Ze Utamu.

Besides legal aspects, members at Jamii Forum also commented on the perceived double standards. Semilong said:

Is utamu the biggest ever crime committed by a Tanzanian?

watu wa JF kwa double standards wanashabikia zeutamu kukamatwa na wakati watu wana loot nchi yetu wanatembea huru
wangeshirikiana na interpool kuhakikisha hela zilizokuwa duabi, jerzey na kwinginepo zinarudi TZ ingekuwa ni jambo la maana kulikoni zeutamu[…]

Also at Jamii Forum, BlueRay supporting the arrest adds:

Your argument is weak. Two wrongs do not make a right. We do not want British citizens (of Tanzanian origin or not) to fling unchecked rampant numerous unfounded character assassinations on Tanzanians.

Does the Tanzanian government project a sense of misguided priority in pursuing this rather than EPA , of course, yes. But it is also possible that this was a quick slam dunk because this guy left his tracks left right and centre, IT consultant indeed! … What saddens me is that it took gross and pornographic caricaturing of the president himself for this to happen.

My concern is our internet laws are practically non existent, and our jurisdiction may be limited because this presumably happened over British web servers (?) by a British subject. So if the guy gets a good attorney, and the government does not use extrajudicial means (if it does not Ghailani him under some autocratic anti-terrorism preventive-detention like draconian)

The guy may walk scot free.

* Global Voices Online has not verified the information published in the blogs covered on this post.

Through her eponymously titled blog, Ms. Semu-Banda blogs with a purpose to “bring awareness and change to Malawi's social and economical problems,” according to a description from her nomination published in an announcement on the BlogHer website. The description goes on to say that Semu-Banda's writing has influenced development projects, citing “the improvement of monitoring programs to get rid of child labour in the tobacco industry”, and “an increase of treatment to women suffering from fistula,” as examples.

Pilirani Semu-Banda

In her most recent blog post, Semu-Banda wrote about poverty as the key issue that was “uppermost” in the minds of most Malawians as they prepared to vote in Malawi's fourth multiparty presidential and parliamentary elections on May 19, 2009.

Semu-Banda is an award-winning journalist whose stories focus on marginalized groups and individuals, and on social problems including child labor and exploitation, inequality, and human rights abuses. In December 2008 she received an ‘Every Human Has Rights' Media Award, presented by Internews Europe, in France, for her story “Playing with Children's Lives: Big Tobacco in Malawi.” Attending the ceremony and presenting the awards to her and other winners were The Elders, who according to The Daily Times included former US president Jimmy Carter, former Irish President Mary Robinson, and former UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan. Also receiving an award at the event was Malawian journalist Gabriel Kamlomo, of Zodiak Broadcasting Station (ZBS), for an investigative radio report he did on a clinic that accidentally transfused HIV-infected blood to a then 2-year old child, in May 2007. ZBS is so far the only Malawi-based radio station that transmits both on airwaves and on the Internet in real time.

Semu-Banda has previously won an Education Journalism Award, and has on two occasions been voted Malawi’s best female journalist. The BlogHer International Activist Scholarship award is the first known international award to be won by a Malawian blogger for a blog. At this year's BlogHer annual conference Semu-Banda will join fellow award winners on a panel titled “Leadership: The BlogHer ’09 International Activist BlogHer Scholarship Winners Share Their Work”, on Saturday July 25, 1.30-2.45pm. The BlogHer conference will be held at The Sheraton Chicago Hotel & Towers, in downtown Chicago.

The Selection Committee for the 2009 International Activist Scholarship comprised 7 judges, who included Georgia Popplewell, the Managing Director for Global Voices Online. The other judges were Denise Tanton, Elisa Camahort Page, Julie Ross Godar, Kim Pearson, Nelly Yusupova, and Jenifer Scharpen. The selection committee “were looking for sites that were, in fact, bloggy, and for those that had a specific activist intent.” And they have high hopes for what this award entails for other bloggers: “We are convinced that we can all learn practical advice about affecting social change via blog from our scholarship winners…and we can all walk away inspired by their courage, their perseverance, and their accomplishments!”

According to Habari Leo , a Tanzanian newspaper[sw] the country’s police are seeking help from Interpol in tracing the owners and publishers of the blog.

Ze utamu (www.zeutamu.com), probably Tanzania's most controversial blog, came to the limelight by publishing a mixture of Tanzanian Diaspora gossip, nude and sex photographs of well known people as well as name-and-shaming articles. While it attracted many readers, the blog has also attracted criticism.

Some bloggers are of the opinion that the authorities did not care when posts about ordinary citizens were posted at ze utamu. A comment from a blog post at Watanzania Oslo blog that posted the Habari Leo article about the police hunt for ze utamu blog owners says:

Mtandao huu wa ze utamu umkuwepo kwa muda mrefu sana na watu wengi wasio na hatia (raia wa kawaida) wamedhalilishwa sana kupitia mtandao huo kwa picha zao kuwekwa bila ridhaa yao. nyingi ya hizo picha ni za utupu na hata zile ambazo siyo za utupu ziliwekwa bila ridhaa ya wahusika. hivi kuwekwa picha ya rais Kikwete ndo kile chombo kinachojifanya cha usalama kinakurupuka kuwasaka wenye mtandao? […]unafiki mkubwa na ufisadi aina nyingine huu. kudhalilishwa ni kudhalilishwa, ama iwe ni raia tu, kiongozi wa kawaida na hata rais.

That point was also raised by Happy Katabazi :

… wiki hii katika mtandao wa www.zeutamu.com mtandao ambao umejipambanua kwa ajili ya kupachika picha za utupu za watu wa kada zote na wanaotembelea mtandao huo huchangia mawazo yanayohusu maisha binafsi ya faragha za watu…
Na wakati mtandao huo ukiendelea kujipambanua mamlaka husika zimekuwa zikiukenulia meno mtandao huu hadi wiki hii ulipotundika picha ya kumdhalilisha rais wetu, ndipo mtandao huo umedhibitiwa kwani hivi sasa hata ukiufungua haufunguki.

During the heyday of ze utamu some bloggers started campaigns to stop the blog, like the Anti-utamu [sw].

As the police search continues and despite having many readers before its disappearance, bloggers and readers who have openly come out to support Ze Utamu owners can hardly be found - at least at the time of writing this post.

I have put together the highlights in an IndiBlogger.in State of the Indian Blogosphere Dashboard –

You can also have a look at the full State of the Indian Blogosphere report at SlideShare –

Here are the highlight of the report –

- More than three-fourths of the blogs in the IndiBlogger.in community are written by men.

- The top five languages are English, Hindi, Tamil, Marathi and Telugu. 92% of the blogs are in English. Renie believes that Indic languages are under-represented in the IndiBlogger.in community, but the distribution between various Indic languages should be representative.

- The top five cities are Bangalore, Chennai, NCR, Mumbai and Hyderabad, which together account for almost three-fourths of all blogs. The city-wise distribution should be fairly representative, but the metros might be over-represented in the sample because these blogger may be more aware of IndiBlogger.in.

- The community is fairly active with 8% posting daily, 47% posting at least weekly and 88% posting at least monthly. In terms of recency, more than 80% blogs have been updated at least once in 2009. Both the frequency and recency data should be fairly representative.

- About 19% of the blogs have a Google PageRank or 3 or above and about 18% have an Alexa Traffic Rank of 3,000,000 or lower. These stats should also be representative.

- The Indian National Interest, Digital Inspiration and Gauravonomics are the three tops blogs in India, as per IndiBlogger.in's IndiRank algorithm. Rankings are always controversial, and IndiRank certainly is, because many important Indian bloggers haven't registered their blogs on IndiBlogger.in yet. I think IndiBlogger.in should not limit itself to submitted blogs and include as many Indian blogs as possible, starting with all the blogs in Amit Agarwal's directory of Indian bloggers. The blog owners can claim it later, if they are interested. This will quickly fix the issue of credibility of the rankings. Also, I think that there's value in being totally transparent about the ranking formula, like the AdAge Power 150 Ranking. Let's see if I can convince Renie to make these changes.

Maneesh Madambath at WATBlog has also written a blog post on the IndiBlogger.in statistics.

In the next IndiBlogger.in State of the Indian Blogosphere report, it might be interesting to do an analysis of how these stats have changed over time. It might also be interesting to use the IndiBlogger.in databse for network analysis using a tool like Linkfluence.

If you want more details of the study, or have suggestions on what other data might be interesting, or want to help us out with new types of analysis, contact Gaurav Mishra or Renie Ravin, or leave a comment below.

Cross-posted at Gauravonomics, my blog on social media and social change.

Photo: © Arzu Geybullayeva / Flying Carpets and Broken Pipelines

Following a terrifying shooting spree at a Baku university which left 13 dead, students took to the streets to demand that a national day of mourning be declared in Azerbaijan. With the request falling on deaf ears, several youth activists, among them some bloggers, planned to protest the inaction, and specifically a festive holiday of flowers scheduled for 10 May.

Jessica P. Hayden is off the map sets the scene.

According to several blogger reports […] there was a candle light vigil at the oil academy on Friday that was broken up by the police.

[…]

Later the vigil became much more of a protest. According to some folks people were shouting “Down with Terrorism! Down with Corruption!”

Next week is the former president's birthday. […] In past years flowers have even been used to create a portrait of the former president. Some locals have been questioning whether it is proper to continue with the celebration in the face of the tragedy. It will certainly be interesting to see how the government responds.

Coordinated by various means, including online social networks such as Facebook, turnout for the peaceful protest last Sunday might have been small, but its significance was enough to force the hand of the authorities. The demonstration was dispersed and 50 people, including at least 3 bloggers, were detained.

Among them was Global Voices Online author Ali S. Novruzov, who yesterday recounted what happened on his personal blog, In Mutatione Fortitudo.

We were around 20-30 youth, most have seen each other first time, and were sitting in front of the National Conservatoire - opposite the Heydar Aliyev Park where the Holiday of Flowers was held. We had two read carnations in our hands (symbols of mourning in Azerbaijan) and were just observing Sodom and Gomorrah across the road and were depressed by the sight of thousands visiting the Holiday - for these law-abiding families, teachers with their students seemed to have no pity to those killed at the Oil Academy rampage.

I think it was this depression that made us to stand up and leave the scene for State Oil Academy to lay our carnations in front of the building in memory of those killed 11 days ago. However, we didn't make just two steps and got immediately detained. […]

Photo: Global Voices Online author Ali S. Novruzov in police custody © In Mutatione Fortitudo

Tools such as Twitter were used to send out updates on the detentions. Although there are known problems with sending out tweets via SMS on certain cellular phone networks in Azerbaijan, one foreign blogger, International Federation of Liberal Youth General Secretary Bart Woord, updated followers from his Blackberry via Twitter's web interface.

Global Voices Online and Global Voices Advocacy were quick to respond and spread the word while the Committee to Protect Bloggers also followed up on the detentions. Meanwhile, OL!, a progressive Azeri youth movement notable for its use of new media, also sent out similar tweets.

Bart Woord also continued to follow the situation, sending out updates on Twitter which were the main source of information for many concerned by what was occurring in Baku. He also managed to announce the release of those detained just before the battery in his mobile phone gave out.

Of course, the main accounts came after those detained were released and video interviews were posted on the OL! blog. Among them were bloggers Nigar Fatali (first), Arzu Geybullayeva (second), and Ali S. Novruzov (last).

Although spared from being dragged into police custody, Arzu Geybullayeva from Flying Carpets and Broken Pipelines also posted a blog entry detailing the day's events in English.

I left my house around noon, heading to the Haydar Aliyev Park, where the so-called celebrations were to be held. […] There was police everywhere- civilian and in uniforms. […] They knew that students and young activists might be having small-scale protests. They were afraid.

[…]

[…] A group of 15- 20 young people were sitting on the stairs opposite to the park by the State Music Academy, holding carnations in their hands and observing the crowd. At about 2 in the afternoon we decided to start walking towards the State Oil Academy to leave carnations on the steps of the building and then go home as a sign of regret for what was going on. But no, nothing can be simple in this country.

[…]

We weren't protesting out loud, we were peacefully walking on the street, heads down, talking. I guess that is also a crime or some version of hooliganism as our police forces liked to call it. […]

[…]

I am deeply saddened by what happened today. […] Today, I truly hated the fact that I am a citizen of this country! […]

Ali S. Novruzov also posted videos of some of the interviews with English subtitles on on his YouTube channel. The accounts explain why the action was held as well as detail the circumstances of the detentions.

Another detained blogger, Nigar Fatali, wrote about the experience on her Russian-language blog, Don Quixote [RU/AZ].

После прихода представителей Американского, Французского и Швейцарского посольств, а также представителей ОБСЕ, недолго думая, бравая полиция решила отпустить иностранного гражданина.

Тут, надо отдать должное директору NDI Арьену, отказавшемуся покидать отделение без своего работника, который, в свою очередь, отказывался уходить без своей девушки (stop_it_please ).

Two days later, on her newly launched English-language blog, Fighting windmills? Take a pill, the blogger reported that her release was not the end of the story.

Police came to my house to “check the registrations” asking my mom questions about me.

Global Voices Online author Ali S. Novruzov also had the same experience and posts a musical clip of a reworked version of a song from Gilbert and Sullivan's The Mikado.

On 12th May I have received a call from from JEK, which looks after public apartments, elevators and litter. […]

Next day came police watchdog of the neighborhood (someone like Sheriff) with three suspicious personalities to check “pasport regime” in whole building (as if our building is flooded with illegal immigrants). However, a paper in his hand betrayed the list of 10 May protesters :)

Today, my father received a call from Crime Investigation Department of our district's police - they were opening a file for me. […]

Such a wonderful country, eh? Can you have such a fun somewhere else for walking with a flower in your hand in the Holiday of Flowers? Lol! They've got a little list!

However, commenting on the action, Side-Talks Azerbaijan says it believes the atmosphere in the country is not one where such actions can succeed.

[…] To the credit of the government, a lot of developments have been achieved during the period of the administration. This is why any unrest that will agitate the people will easily be clamped down by the security personnel.

Finally, in one of a few entries, Flying Carpets and Broken Pipelines posts a chronology of events, and in another asks if the action was worth it.

No mourning was declared and the celebrations took place as planned. Among those who were killed, was a new bride, married just two weeks prior to the shootings. She went to work as she did on her usual day, an hour later her mother received a phone call that her daughter was dead.

I am not a judge but how right it was to have the celebrations- the visit to Haydar Aliyev park that day was followed by a concert at the boulevard, and fireworks later in the evening. Was this how the state paid its respect for those who were killed in the shooting or a simple message that it didn't care?! Judge it yourself!