Global Voices · Citizen media stories from 2009 June 09

9 June 2009

Daily archive · 5 posts

Stories from 9 June 2009

North Korea: Two American Journalists Sentenced to Hard Labor

Written by Bhumika Ghimire · East Asia, North America

News coming out of Pyongyang is not encouraging. After being accused of illegally crossing the border to North Korea, American Current TV journalists Laura Ling and Euna Lee have been sentenced to 12 years of hard labor. The bleak outcome is eliciting strong reaction online from those who support freedom of press and want North Korea to release the two journalists.

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Caste Based Communities on Orkut Mirror India's Splintered Society

Written by Gaurav Mishra · South Asia

I have written before about Shiv Sena's militant approach towards Orkut communities critical of the party, its leader Bal Thakeray, or its Hindutva ideology. Caste-based communities on Orkut are another disturbing example of online communities mirroring the splintered nature of Indian society.

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Iranian Election in Photos

Written by Fred Petrossian · Middle East & North Africa

The Iranian presidential election will be held on June 12. Only four men, out of more than 400 self-registered men and women, were given official approval by the Guardian Council for the candidacy. The sharp eyes of blogger-photographers have captured moments and scenes in the streets of Iran where people promote their favorite candidates.

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Americas: Looking Forward to Central America Free Software Festival

Written by Renata Avila · Latin America

The Central American Free Software Festival will take place on June 17-21 in Estelí, Nicaragua. This will be the first opportunity for many enthusiasts of open-source and free software from across Central America to come together to share experiences, promote their projects, establish common objectives, and to find ways to work together. The schedule of events include workshops, panels, and a “rapid-development” tournament for the creation of an application.

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Global Voices Advocacy Wins Zemanta Blog Contest

Written by Solana Larsen · Announcements

Global Voices Advocacy won first prize in Zemanta's Blogging for a Cause competition today. More than 60 different websites were nominated, and the top 5 to receive the most votes from bloggers have each won $1200. Thanks for all the support!!

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Updates from 9 June 2009

Nigeria

Sokari writes about Wiwa's case against Shell for human rights violation in Nigeria: “The case has been settled out of court with $10 million going to the 10 plaintiffs and $5 million being gifted to the Ogoni people.”

• Ndesanjo Macha

Ethiopia

“If it works in Africa, it will work anywhere,” says White Africa in his post about Gmail Preview in Africa: “Google realized what slow connections were doing to people’s interaction with their email accounts. So, they sent in a team of engineers to work in cyber cafes in Ethiopia to test out where the bottlenecks were and to come up with a solution.”

• Ndesanjo Macha

South Africa

Brett writes about a new project to support community media in South Africa: “The Alternative Information Development Centre (AIDC) is working in partnership with the National Community Radio forum (NCRF) to produce a quarterly Amandla! News Diary. The Diary aims to support community media projects in South Africa…”

• Ndesanjo Macha

Pakistan

Teeth Mastro discusses about a recent report on the internally displaced persons (IDPs) in Pakistan titled “A tragedy of errors and Cover-ups:The IDPs and outcome of military actions in FATA and Malakand Division”. The Human Rights Commission Of Pakistan published the report.

• Rezwan

Bangladesh

Uncultured.com helps the students of Dharmarajika Monastery, Orphange and School in Dhaka with geometry sets, school uniforms and course workbooks. Here is a photoblog describing the efforts.

• Rezwan

Iran

Golamhussein Karbaschi, a leading reformist campaigner in Iran's presidential election, twittered [fa] that all copies of Ettemad Meli, a reformist journal, were collected by the authorities because Mehdi Karoubi, a reformist candidate,accused President Ahmadinejad of being involved in financial scandals.

• Fred Petrossian

China

Rebecca MacKinnon from Rconversation followed up the WSJ story on China PC filter, Green Dam, and gave more background information about the application of the software locally. She also reminded that criticism on the filtering system should be consistent globally. ESWN translated user comments on the Green Dam.

• Oiwan Lam