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Blogging Tunisia: whisper!

Sami Ben Gharbia · 17:37 · Middle East & North Africa

Blogging Tunisia

Roughly a year ago, the Tunisian weekly newspaper, Tunis Hebdo has published an article about the Tunisian Blogs [Fr] in which the author, Zouhour Harbaoui, shaped a frivolous image of the Tunisian Blogs as a matter of all and nothing. The reactions of the bloggers, whether on Tunis Hebdo online or on their blogs, were furious. While welcoming the first article on a national newspaper talking about them, bloggers were upset by the way the author treated their sphere. They accused the journalist of misunderstanding the new medium and not taking a deep look into the Tunisian blogsphere. Some of them even have asserts that blogging in Tunisia is an alternative to the national press and that the Tunisian blogs are filling the vacuum that the mainstream media have created.

One year later, what’s left of that positive self-perception that bloggers have maintained? Do they really represent an alternative to the print media? Do they offer a safe space in which they write freely and bypass strict state censorship? Are they concerned about the freedom of expression on the Web? Are they worried about Internet Filtering used by the Tunisian regime like Democlas' sword that can fall down at any moment and blocks sites, blogs and all kinds of dissent information?
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US secret detentions: from hotel room to squalid prison cell

Gavin Simpson · 17:32 · Macedonia , Afghanistan

When President George W. Bush confirmed in a speech last month that the CIA has been operating a programme of secret detentions on foreign territory, it was portrayed by the United States Government as part of its efforts to “bring terrorists to justice”.

Yet this programme, along with the controversial new Military Commissions Act now awaiting the President's signature into law, has been heavily criticised on human rights grounds by everyone from jurists to academics to Senators to bloggers. Secret detentions actually deny prisoners any access to justice, making them vulnerable to torture and disappearance. As a recently published report for the Council of Europe revealed, hundreds of suspects have become trapped in a “global spider’s web” of illegal abductions, detentions and transfers.

And yet, despite widely-publicised revelations in media such as the Washington Post and ABC News going back nearly a year, exact details of where and how terrorist suspects are held in practice have proven difficult to come by. Most of us are familiar with images of the US-run facility at Guantanamo Bay, but we don’t really know what goes on away from the public glare.

Now, in this piece of video footage newly uploaded to blip, you can walk through a place where a man suspected of involvement in terrorism was secretly detained:

For those of you protesting “but it’s a hotel room!”, you’re absolutely right – an apparently normal, comfortable suite in a high-end hotel in Skopje, the capital city of Macedonia. But it was in this room that a German citizen, Khaled El-Masri, who has never faced any criminal charges, was kept incommunicado for 23 days in January 2004. It was here that he was tightly guarded by intelligence agents – even on his visits to the bathroom – refused legal or consular help, interrogated continuously about Islamic extremism, and threatened with a gun to his head when he tried to leave.

From this hotel room, El-Masri was handed over to the CIA and flown to Afghanistan, where he would spend the next four months in a squalid prison cell.

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Serbia: Debate on Media Depiction of Kosovo Children

Ljubisa Bojic · 17:27 · Eastern & Central Europe

B92 news have reported on the journalist association's reaction to the alleged mistreatment of children from Kosovo and Metohia (in further text K&M) during a talk show on national TV. Independent Association of Journalists of Serbia (NUNS) claims that the so-called public service TV tried to manipulate citizens in a Goebbels manner and mobilize them to support a constitution draft in the upcoming referendum. The bill is supposed to protect K&M by stating that the region is an indivisible part of Serbia, which gives a boost to the Serbian side in the ongoing negotiations to determine the future status of K&M. They say the talk show host Natasa Miljkovic should be denied membership in the journalists' association because she used the finest of human emotions to fulfill political goals. State TV CEO Aleksandar Tijanic said that the filming took place before the referendum was announced. He also said that the association was trying to implement censorship so they could not depict the lives of K&M children. B92 news website (SRP) received a record number of comments in a very short time. The debate turns out to be not only about children but also about double standards and the priorities of the media that prevent ordinary citizens from knowing about the lives of their compatriots in the country's remote corners:

Tanja:

I was really stunned when I spotted all the kids around in the TV studio, it brings out special feelings in most of the viewers. […]

Jovan:

I couldn’t sleep all night. The journalist was really uncompassionate. I think the children were misused. We should help them, but this is not the way. […]

Nenad P.:

[…] She leads children into crying and then she asks them to promise they would not cry… shame on her!!! […] Why would one make a small girl talk about the death of her father and then make her promise she would not cry when talking about hurtful issues… [Journalist] feels in full control of ruthless reality. She carries on with sick games with children not lifting the pedagogic smile off her face. […]

Srbin:

[…] The show's hostess, Natasa Miljkovic, was unbearable! She is not up to the challenge of talking to those poor kids: instead of making the atmosphere more comfortable, she annoyed them additionally. She was unnatural and without compassion. Aside the topic of the dialogue, misuse and other issues, but the children were upset and irritated. You could see that from an airplane. The one who couldn’t see that, shouldn’t come close to any child! Sorry for the tough words, but what I saw was actually annoying.

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Cuba: The dengue problem

Georgia Popplewell · 16:21 · Americas

The video above appeared on YouTube on September 29, 2006, with no accompanying information but the tags “cuba” and “dengue“. Linked earlier this week by The Real Cuba, it appears to support what blogger Marc Masferrer wrote last Friday:

Everyone in Havana and other cities has seen the clouds of insecticides used to attack the disease-carrying mosquitos that spread dengue, and heard exhortations from temporary dictator Raúl Castro and other government officials about the importance of stamping out the epidemic.

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Voices from Kazakhstan

Leila Tanayeva · 15:02 · Central Asia & Caucasus

After a break in voicing the Kazakh bloggers, caused by neweurasia team doing outreach in Central Asia, we present you the newest roundup of online conversations in Kazakhstan. Several major news attracted media attention to Kazakhstan recently: the President of the country Nazarbayev visited the White House, Sasha Baron Cohen announced release of his new film “Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan” and Government financed Hollywood-style film “Nomad” came out on big screens.

While media paid unusual amount of attention to otherwise rarely reported on country, mostly concentrating on Kazakhstan's bid for OSCE chairmanship, “Nomad” being an answer to Borat, Nazarbayev wanting to speak to Bush about ban on Borat film in the United States, the English language-blogs writing on Kazakhstan did extensive and knowledgeable blogging on these issues: see Registan.net, Sean R. Roberts, KZblog, LJ user tropical_rat for more reading.

What did Kazakhstan Russian-language bloggers think about it? Business as usual, not much hysteria about Borat, and not much meaning into Nazarbayev's visit to Washington either. LJ user adam_kesher could not resist posting about the perception of the President's visit by American online media (RU):
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Hong Kong: Flash mob rape and disney bomb threat

Oiwan Lam · 01:37 · East Asia

A 42 years old man's Internet messages inviting others to join him in a “flash mob rape” has resulted in Hong Kong's first conviction for outraging public decency through expressions on the world wide Web on September 20 and sentenced to 160 hours of community service yesterday (October 4).

Another case “disney bomb threat” is on the line. The 21 years old netizen was arrested on September 21.

In the internet, the opinions are very extreme. Some suggest harsh punishment, some say that the case is against freedom of expression, some try to differentiate between two cases.

Destiny expresses his opinion towards internet behavior:

「網路」並非虛擬不實，也不是完全自由，「網路」是切切實實的現實世界，也
要為自己的所作所為負上應有的責任，同樣也有法律的束縛。

“Internet” is not virtual and unreal, and it doesn't have unlimited freedom. “Internet” is part of the real world, people have to be responsible of their behavior and restrict by the law.

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