It's reported the Zimbabwe's censorship board has declared it will now be a crime for artists to perform without an entertainment licence.

Solomon Chitungo, an official with the Censorship Board, is quoted as saying; This is not a new thing it has always been there but it's just that it was not applied strictly and artists have been performing illegally. The certificate will be valid for 12 months. It's just like a drivers licence, we are also just issuing a licence to provide entertainment and if one is to be found without the certificate we will stop the show and confiscate their equipment, he said.

Newsreel has been told artists will now need to pay US$25 a year while institutions will have to cough up US$155 a year to get the entertainment licence. While the law is not new, as the censorship board official admitted, their motivation in dusting-off an outdated law from Ian Smith's Rhodesian regime is meant to find yet another way of controlling free expression.

SW Radio Africa (SWRA) have done an incredible job ensuring news-deprived Zimbabweans still have access to impartial objective information despite the Zanu PF government's passing of repressive legislation.  SWRA, broadcasting from outside Zimbabwe on short wave, have managed to provide independent news to parts of the country that email and online news sources cannot reach. As such they have been a lifeline of information to oppressed Zimbabweans.

It has also made SWRA a thorn in the side for members of the political elite who feel most threatened by a critical and enquiring press that seeks to expose corruption and human rights abuses.

SWRA have been jammed before, but their article on their website about this instance conveys shock at the fact that, this time, the jamming is happening under the inclusive government which includes former opposition parties that have supposedly fought for democratic principles.

Robert Mugabe's regime has resumed jamming news broadcasts from SW Radio Africa. On Wednesday evening the first half hour of our broadcast featuring Newsreel was drowned out by a heavy noise, sounding like a slow playing record.

In 2005 Mugabe's regime began jamming SW Radio Africa frequencies just before the controversial Operation Murambatsvina. It was reported that the jamming equipment and expertise was provided by China and at the time we spoke to a soldier who says he was sent to China to be trained in jamming techniques.

For the past few weeks we have been concerned that jamming tests were being carried out on our broadcasts as various radio hams around the world have been sending us regular reports of a faintly audible music loop. Unfortunately it was confirmed that these were tests, as jamming began in earnest on 1st September.

The Committee to Protect Journalists condemns threatening comments made by President Bingu wa Mutharika against Malawian news outlets last week. Mutharika threatened to close newspapers that report critically about his administration after the private weeklies Malawi News and Weekend Nation cited a regional agency's report forecasting food shortages in the country.

I will close down newspapers that lie and tarnish my government's image, the president said at an agricultural fair in Blantyre. The president told editors to leave blank pages or else publish pictures of cows, hyenas, or dogs, if they have nothing positive to report, according to local reports.

Instead of making threats and telling editors what to print, the president should uphold his country's constitutional commitment to press freedom, said CPJ East Africa Consultant Tom Rhodes. The president should allow the press to report freely, especially on such vital matters as food supply.

Malawi News and Weekend Nation cited a food supply forecast by the Southern African Development Community (SADC), which said more than one million Malawians could face shortages in the wake of dry conditions in the south.

The Zimbabwe Government has banned the works of prominent visual artist Owen Maseko depicting the Fifth Brigade atrocities of the 1980s in which an estimated 20 000 civillians, mostly supporters of the Zimbabwe African People's Union (ZAPU), were killed by the army unit.

The civilians were massacred in the Matableland and Midlands Provinces and Robert Mugabe's only apology was that it was a moment of madness.

Maseko's works were banned under the Censorship and Entertainment Act. In a government gazette, the government banned the showing of video clips with effigies, words and paintings on the walls of the National Art Gallery set up by Maseko.

Meanwhile, Vote Thebe, the Director of the National Art Gallery and the sculptor of a nude statue, Looking into the Future, is expected to appear in court on charges of allowing Maseko to hold the art exhibition without a licence.

Thebe will also be charged under the Censorship and Entertainment Act for allegedly keeping a nude statue at the gallery showing male genital organs. Looking into the Future was pulled down from Bulawayo's Tower Block gardens in the 1980s after the local authority was accused of aiding Thebe to mount an offensive piece of art in public.

Police closed Maseko's exhibition on March 26, showing President Mugabe and his crack army unit dripping with blood of cowed innocent civilians, 24 hours after it was mounted at the gallery. He was then arrested and granted bail a few days after police closed a photography exhibition in Harare showing human rights violations by Mugabe's supporters.

The director general of the Kano State Film and Censorship Board, Abubakar Rabo Abdulkarim, was nearly lynched over the weekend.

Abdulkarim was rather ironically also noted as a former shariah law enforcer,

The censorship board has been waging a scorched earth campaign against actors, musicians and producers in the state for allegedly promoting immorality. As a result, many artistes fled the state and now ply their trade elsewhere.

The trouble started when a police patrol team accosted Abdulkarim after they saw his car parked in a secluded environment behind a mall with a young girl inside.

Abdulkarim, who insisted that the girl he was found with was his niece, said he was not having an affair with her. But when he discovered he could not convince the contingent of policemen on night patrol on the propriety of having an under-aged girl in his car at such a late hour, he panicked.

A police source said when the patrol team attempted to arrest Abdulkarim he took flight in his car.

While trying to escape however, he knocked down an official of the Kano History and Culture Bureau who was riding on a motorcycle.

This incurred the wrath of Okada riders, who thought that he had knocked down a member of their union and promptly moved to give him a thorough beating.

He was only saved from a lynching by the police who had been in pursuit of his car.

The Sudanese government has announced it is suspending the BBC's license to broadcast in Arabic on local FM frequencies in four northern cities, including the capital, Khartoum.

Security personnel also informed editors in recent days that journalists who had not completed an extensive government questionnaire would be detained, journalists told CPJ.

The BBC said on its website that it hopes that ongoing discussions with the authorities in Khartoum will get it back on air. Jihad Ali Ballout, communications manager for BBC Arabic in London, told CPJ that the broadcaster's priority is its weekly audience of 4 million listeners in Sudan, and that it hopes to find ways to reconnect with them.

Separately, security services distributed a questionnaire to journalists in July consisting of 26 detailed questions about political viewpoints, friends, addresses, bank accounts, and floor plans of journalists' residences. Critical publications were told to return the completed forms no later than August 5, local journalists told CPJ.

Sahal Adam of the Arabic-language daily Ajras al-Huriya told CPJ he refused to submit the detailed information. The aim here is twofold, he said. One, to collect information useful when a need to arrest a critical journalist arises, but also to intimidate us. Agents told his editor that Adam would be arrested if he didn't cooperate, the journalist said. Other journalists refused to submit the questionnaire. However, they were summoned to the security offices and after several hours of interrogation and threats they provided the information.

Sudan has shown itself to be intolerant of any international attention, and this ban on BBC Arabic is merely the latest example, said Mohamed Abdel Dayem, CPJ Middle East and North Africa program coordinator. We are also gravely disturbed by this questionnaire for journalists, especially the demand for a floor plan of their homes. We can see no reason why the government would want this information and the transparent aim is to intimidate journalists, who could face arrest.

This week, the South African National Editors' Forum (Sanef) undertook what has now become a familiar visit to Parliament in a bid to stop yet another cynical attempt to erode press freedom.

The difference this time is that the offending Protection of Information Bill has been roundly condemned by civil society and even government agencies themselves for its insidiousness.

The chorus of condemnation has come from, among others, the Institute for Democracy in SA, the Human Rights Commission, the Southern African Catholic Bishops' Conference, the SA Media and Gender Institute, Eskom, the Open Democracy Advice Centre and Print Media Association.

In its current form, the bill provides definitions of national security and national interest that are so absurdly broad they would severely restrict access to information for just about anybody and any institution; making nonsense of the ideal of open society and transparency.

Sanef siad: We have far too many people in Parliament who do not share our beliefs in constitutional democracy and its imperatives of transparency and openness. Some of them have never shared these values and actually once worked against them.

Yet others who once shared them have since stopped doing so, after betraying the liberation struggle ideals of reconstruction and development. Transparency and press freedom are inimical to their corrupt ways; hence the attempts to curb the free flow of information.

Why, otherwise, the Protection of Information Bill that would result in journalists being jailed for lengthy periods for doing their jobs, and also undermine the ability of parliamentarians themselves, and elected officials, to hold the State accountable?

Update: The Tribunal's Out

10th August 2010. Based on article from google.com

Proposed media regulations in South Africa have raised fears that the government is trying to control news coverage, drawing comparisons to apartheid-era censorship.

The ruling African National Congress is mulling a Media Appeals Tribunal, while parliament is considering the Protection of Information Bill, which media organisations say would hamper investigative reporting.

The media tribunal, first mooted in 2007, would adjudicate complaints on media reports in a bid to make journalists legally accountable, the ANC said.

Media houses are wary of legal penalties, and say the Press Ombudsman already hears complaints and can require newspapers to print prominent apologies or corrections.

Recent reports on government spending on luxury vehicles have irked the government of President Jacob Zuma, who also figured in a long investigation into a multi-billion-dollar arms deal first reported in South African media.

ANC secretary Gwede Mantashe said a media tribunal was required to deal with the so-called dearth of media ethics in South Africa. The party's general council will thrash out the idea at a meeting next month.

Sudan's National Assembly has welcomed the National Security Organ's decision to lift censorship, terming it as a significant step toward boosting press freedoms.

Abdurham Ahmed Al-Sheikh Al-Fadni, the Head Acting Human Rights Committee, hailed the initiative of the national press to serve national interests and enlightenment on challenging facing the country. He said the decision would put Sudanese press before a new challenge with regard to performing its duties toward the country through self-monitoring and complying with the Press Ethic, Press Association and Press & Prints Council.

Lieut. Gen. Mohamed Ataa, Chief of National Security and Intelligence affirmed that the organ preserves it constitutional right to impose partial or full censorship whenever necessary, adding that the security organ is keen on press and political rights as long as there is common agreement to prejudice against principles of the country and unity of its territories.

The First independent Ethiopian satellite service (ESAT) said its transmissions in Ethiopia are intercepted for the third time since last May when the service was launched for the first time.

The Amsterdam-based Ethiopian Satellite Television (ESAT) in a press release has held the Ethiopian government responsible for the interception.

For the past 24 hours, Ethiopian Satellite Television (ESAT) broadcasts and transmissions in Ethiopia, the Middle East and Europe have been disrupted for the third time since it began service in May 2010.

ESAT said it has gathered evidences that show that the Ethiopian Government being illegally engaged with certain parties in the satellite business attempted to isolate and disrupt ESAT signals:

Our evidence on the source of the illegal signal interference points exclusively in the direction of the Ethiopian Government. Beginning on July 20, the satellite system carrying ESAT signals was bombarded by intense and sustained radio frequency interference disrupting a whole set of services provided by various public and private entities.'Along with ESAT, the satellite service of state-controlled Ethiopian Television was also knocked of the air.

When ESAT resumed its services after it was disrupted the second time, a request was made to the satellite provided to place ESAT on the same frequency as Ethiopian Television Service. This would ensure that any interference in ESAT signals would also affect Ethiopian Television transmissions. The Ethiopian Government by attempting to knock out ESAT ended up knocking itself off the air.'

Sudan intelligence services have imposed press censorship, which was lifted in September, six months ahead of a key referendum on independence for south Sudan, the country's association of journalists said.

We have been notified by the intelligence services that the newspaper Al-Intibaha has been closed and that from today press censorship has once again been imposed, Mohiedinne Titawi, president of the Sudanese Union of Journalists, told AFP.

The censorship will focus on the issue of the country's unity or separation and the security of south Sudan, he added.

Titawi's comments follow earlier reports by Sudanese journalists that the government halted the distribution of three newspapers considered critical of the authorities in south Sudan.

The three dailies, Al-Intibaha, Al-Tayyar and Al-Ahdath, which are all deemed critical in one way or another of the south Sudan authorities, were not available on the streets of the capital on Tuesday, according to journalists working for the publications.

Al-Intibaha, which will be closed for an undetermined period, according to its editor Al-Siddig al-Rizeigui, was one of the only newspapers openly advocating secession.

The South Africa Law Reform Commission (LRC) is conducting research to determine how the South African Pornographic Bill should be implemented, a process that could take up to 18 months.

Bayanda Mzoneli, media and parliamentary liaison officer for the Department of Home Affairs, says the deputy minister Malusi Gigaba requested guidance from the LRC in September 2009 on how best to ensure that TV, mobile phones, and the Internet can be included in the classification dispensation to protect children.

Mzoneli explains that the Justice Alliance of South Africa (Jasa) went so far as to draft the South African Pornographic Bill out of its own initiative, to contribute to the process. He notes the current draft Bill is not an official draft Bill of government, and the deputy minister is officially waiting for advice from the LRC.

Mzoneli says the advice of the LRC would be to determine whether the inclusion should take the format of legislation, regulation, self-regulation or otherwise.

He adds that the Bill is currently open for public debate, and that IT professionals have not been forthcoming in providing insight into the technological barriers surrounding the implementation of the Bill.

Hopefully the public discussion will help guide the Bill, but ultimately it is up to the LRC to decide how the Bill will be implemented, he says.

Supposedly worried by the rate at which obscene movies are gaining acceptance in Ghana, the country's Ministry of Information working in collaboration with the censor board and the Movie Union has wielded the sledge hammer on the film producers by banning the sell of x-rated movies in Ghana.

The ban, according to a reliable source became effectively last month.

As it stands now, any films with scenes of nudity will be banned and prevented from entering the market.

A top editor of an independent Rwandan newspaper that was recently banned by the government was assassinated in front of his home, according to local news reports.

An assailant shot Jean-Léonard Rugambage, acting editor of Umuvugizi as he drove through the gate of his home in the capital, Kigali, around 10 p.m., Rwanda National police spokesperson Eric Kayiranga told CPJ. At the moment, we are yet to establish who is involved in the killing and police are currently conducting investigations and we will provide information as it comes, he said.

Rwanda's Media High Council suspended Umuvugizi's right to publish in April. Soon after Umuvugizi moved online, its Web site became inaccessible to domestic visitors. Censorship of the publication, one of the few critical voices in the country, has come in the run-up to the August presidential election.

Rugambage had reported to friends and colleagues that he was being followed and had received phone threats, local journalists told CPJ. Jean-Bosco Gasasira, the exiled editor of Umuvugizi, told the U.S. government-funded Voice of America that he believed the killing was reprisal for a recent story alleging government involvement in the shooting of a former Rwandan army commander in South Africa.

The brutal murder of Jean-Léonard Rugambage deals a savage blow to Rwanda's already beleaguered independent media, said Africa Advocacy Coordinator Mohamed Keita. It comes amid a government crackdown on critical reporting ahead of the August presidential election, and raises serious questions about the safety of independent journalists in the country. The authorities must ensure that all those behind this murder, including the masterminds, are brought to justice swiftly.

John Tia Akologu, Ghana's Minister of Information has inaugurated a 25-member Cinematograph Exhibition Board of Control and charged it to look out particularly for and deal with pornographic, violent and culturally unacceptable films in the country.

The old Board was dissolved owing to the public outcry about its inability to avert objectionable material being shown on the television, public cinema and video theatres even though Act 76 of the Cinematograph Act of 1961 authorised it to censor films.

Akologu said the new Board will constitute a preview and classification committee. Until the passage into law, the development and classification of a Film Bill to provide the machinery to deal with the production, previewing, distribution and marketing of films.

He called on producers of audio-visual materials and television companies to produce films that were sensitive to the concerns of the Ghanaian public: I wish to urge the industry practitioners to produce educative and positive films instead of films full of violence, pornography and other offensive sounds and images that are harmful to our minds especially the fragile minds of our children.

A Sudanese newspaper said it would suspend publication for one week in protest at stringent censorship by authorities, as five other papers were censored in Africa's largest country, journalists said.

Direct pre-publication censorship was reintroduced for two daily papers last month and four others also complained they were visited by Sudanese security forces who removed many pages of content.

We will suspend our newspaper for a week in protest at the pre-(publication) censorship, said Faiz Al-Silaik, acting editor in chief of the Ajras Al-Huriya paper, aligned to the former southern rebel Sudan People's Liberation Movement.

Ajras Al-Huriya was unable to go to press on Sunday for the third day in a row and the opposition Al-Meydan, aligned to the Communist Party, was not allowed to print.

They went to the printing press...and they told the press not to print the paper, said managing editor Mohamed el-Fatih from Al-Meydan. The main news they were unhappy about seemed to be the doctors' strike.

Journalists from six independent or opposition papers told Reuters they were visited and directly censored by the security forces late on Saturday night.

Other papers said they were called and told not to write about specific news including the strike by doctors over pay and working conditions and the International Criminal Court, unless it was from a government source.

Update: Police newspaper censorship relaxed

12th June 2010. Based on article from sudantribune.com

The Sudanese General Union of Sudanese Journalists moderated a dialogue between the National Intelligence and Security Services (NISS) and two independent newspapers subject to pre-publication censorship and managed to lift it as a result, state media reported today.

The Secretary general of the pro-government union Mohyideen Tetawi said that they will defend press freedom by all means but at the same time stressed that the country's sovereignty and dignity is a red line cannot be overstepped.

Sudanese president Omer Hassan Al-Bashir last year lifted press censorship after petitions from the journalists' union but warned editor in chiefs that they should avoid what leads to exceeding the red lines and avoid mixing what is patriotic and what is destructive to the nation, sovereignty, security, values and its morality.

South Africa wants to censor the internet from pornography.

According to the South African government in a statement from The Deputy Minister of Home Affairs Malusi Gigaba: The Internet and Cellphone Pornography Bill proposes that pornography be filtered out at the tier one service providers to avoid it entering the country. The Bill is aimed at the total ban of pornography on internet and mobile phones. United Arab Emirates and Yemen already have legislation in this regard. Australia and New Zealand are currently seeking to do so.

Malusi Gigaba met with Justice Alliance of South Africa that was represented by Advocate Johan Smyth and Brendan Studti. The meeting was part of the ongoing work to draft the bill and to get legal opinion on constitutional issues related to the Internet and Cellphone Pornography Bill.

Current legislation in South Africa already bans child pornography but the proposed bill iwill ban all pornography entirely from computers and cellphones through the internet.

Malusi Gigaba said that Cars are already provided with brakes and seatbelts, it is not an extra that consumers have to pay for. There is no reason why the internet should be provided without the necessary restrictive mechanisms built into it.

Witnesses say the security forces moved to prevent a planned demonstration by internet users against the blocking of access to internet sites.

There was a strong police presence in the main avenue of the capital and adjoining streets Saturday, after a demonstration was announced in recent days via sites including Twitter and Facebook.

One of the protest organisers, opposition journalist and blogger Soufiane Chourabi, said the protesters had planned to march, wearing T-shirts with slogans such as Lift the lockdown of the internet, to the Ministry of Communications. He said organisers had applied to the Interior Ministry for permission to hold the demonstration, but received no reply.

Sudanese security officers stormed two newspapers tearing up articles ready for printing, employees said.

Authorities went to the offices of the Ajras al-Hurriya, which is linked to the former southern rebel Sudan People's Liberation Movement and the independent daily Al-Sahafa, and confiscated articles.

Security officers also went to the offices of the Al-Sahafa daily and demanded to see editorial material and opinion columns, an employee said.

The move comes just days after authorities shut down the Rai al-Shaab newspaper of Islamist leader Hassan al-Turabi, and detained four employees.

Tunisia is carrying out one of the most massive wave of online censorship targeting major social websites, video-sharing websites, blogs aggregators, blogs, facebook pages and profiles. The most recent victim of this wave is flickr, the popular and one of the best online photo-sharing website, blocked today, April 28th, 2010.

Last week, on April 22, 2010, Tunisia has added 3 more websites to its list of banned video-sharing websites in the country. Blip.tv, metacafe.com and vidoemo.com are not welcome aymore in the country. In early April, 2010, WAT.TV, another social networking and media-sharing website, which is believed to be the 3rd video broadcaster on the Internet in France, has also been blocked.

The targeting of video-sharing websites by Tunisian censors started on September 3rd, 2007, with the ban of Dailymotion, then it was the turn of Youtube to be banned from the country's Internet on November 2nd, 2007.

...Read full article

Access to the Sudan Vote Monitor website, a collaborative platform created by Sudanese civil society with the aim of facilitating independent monitoring and reporting of the current elections and their results, has been partially or totally blocked for the past six days.

The elections, which began on 11 April and which are the first multiparty general elections in Sudan since 1986, have been marked by allegations of irregularities.

We demand the immediate and total unblocking of this website, which is used by NGOs, journalists and ordinary citizens to report fraud and irregularities in these historic elections, Reporters Without Borders said: Respect for freedom of expression is an essential condition for the holding of free and fair elections.

The press freedom organisation added: At time when criticism is coming from all quarters, this act of censorship is reinforcing doubts about the transparency of these elections. It sets a dangerous precedent for other upcoming votes, such as the crucial referendum on self-determination for the south that is supposed to be held by next January.

Following recent remarks by South Africa's Deputy Home Affairs Minister Malusi Gigaba expressing interest in a law to ban porn from being transmitted on the internet, cell phones and television, Arthur Goldstuck, MD of World Wide Worx has warned the government against the idea, saying it is futile, will only cost the country a lot of money to enforce and could make the country a global pariah in terms of corporate investment.

It's not possible to ban internet porn unless government becomes a nanny state over what everyone does over the Internet, said Goldstuck. It would require enormous resources from internet providers and extensive resources from government.

Home Affairs Minister Gigaba said that he also wants South Africa to not only join the global fight against the spread of child pornography, but also to work to protect children in general from porn in the mass media.

We are still awaiting the report of the Law Reform Commission on our request for advice on the possibility to prohibit pornography in the mass media, public broadcasters as well as internet and mobile phones, he said in a speech in Parliament, adding, We are determined that we should have legislation ... to protect our children. Those who want to view pornography must do so in the privacy of well-regulated adult shops.

A proposed media law is a monster, says Dr George Lugalambi, chair of a coalition fighting to preserve press freedom in Uganda.

Publishers and journalists would have to apply annually for a licence, which could be revoked at will in the interests of national security, stability and unity, or if coverage was deemed to be economic sabotage.

Professor Fredrick Jjuuko, a media law expert says such provisions violate the constitution: The constitution provides for a freedom of expression and media and the presumption is that means for everybody. The new bill is making this freedom exclusive for those with university degrees which is unfair.

Lugalambi, who is also head of the Department of Mass Communication at Makerere University, says the Ugandan media is already burdened with repressive laws such as the one that makes it a crime to publish unfavourable information about government activities and public officials. Lugalambi's coalition - known as Article 29 after the section of Uganda's constitution that guarantees freedom of expression - calls on the government to support self-regulatory initiatives.

But Princess Kabakumba Labwoni Matsiko, Uganda's minister for information, insists she will go ahead with the proposed bill: Freedoms go with responsibilities. Do you want a media that does not follow any rules? What we are proposing is to create a responsible media and Ugandans will have chance to contribute when it's finally tabled in parliament. They write (about) everything. They draw cartoons of the president and sometimes pornography, like in the Red Pepper tabloid.

On December 2, 2009, the peace was interrupted in a southern Morocco town by the clamors of local students protesting their difficult situation and lack of decent infrastructure.

The peaceful march was violently confronted by the authorities who proceeded to arrest a number of students. Later that day, an ad hoc committee was created to support the arrested protesters. It issued a statement calling for the immediate release of the students and condemned what it described as harsh and barbaric treatment by the authorities.

Bashir Hazzam, a blogger from the region published the statement along with links to a video taken at the scene.

A couple of days later, Bashir, and Abdullah Boukfou, the owner of the Internet café frequented by the blogger, were arrested and accused of publishing false information harmful to the image of the country on human rights.

...Read the full article

The Somali insurgent group, Hisbul Islam has imposed oppressive edicts on the radio stations in Mogadishu, especially those based in the areas under their control. Music has again been banned.

The edicts instruct stations not to air music and songs and not to name the foreign fighters as foreigners, but rather to refer to them as Muhaajiriin.

This is the first time the media stations in Mogadishu are facing such public censorship. Six of the eight radio stations under the Hisbul Islam and Al-Shabaab-held neighbourhoods of Mogadishu will be directly affected by these oppressive edicts.

Similar edicts have been imposed on media stations in the southern Somalia regions held by the radical Islamist group Al-Shabaab.

The National Union of Somali Journalists (NUSOJ) from Mogadishu strongly protested the increased censorship.

Applause broke out at a Zimbabwe exhibition as seized photos were returned.

24 hours earlier, police had barged into the gallery, seized the photographs and arrested Okay Machisa, an activist who organised their exhibition. The police claimed the 66 pictures were lewd because they showed nudity and that the subjects had not given their consent.

No one doubted their real motive was that the exhibition, Reflections, contained devastating images of the political violence that wracked Zimbabwe two years ago. They included a man lying on a hospital bed, a livid wound where his leg used to be, and Morgan Tsvangirai, leader of the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), his face battered and swollen.

Human rights activists went to the high court and obtained an order for the pictures to be returned. So they were rehung in the gallery courtyard just minutes before Tsvangirai himself arrived to formally open the exhibition.

Tsvangirai called for more such exhibitions and said that Machisa, who was nowhere to be seen, had no need to remain in hiding. He told the gathering: He should come out. No one is going to threaten him.

But as so often in Zimbabwe, he spoke too soon. Shortly after the prime minister's departure, the police returned, warning that they would be back to impound the photos before the night was out. So as the last guests melted away, the organisers could be seen frantically taking the pictures down and rushing them to a car so they could be driven to a secret location. The exhibition has been cancelled, though there are plans to revive it elsewhere.

Zimbabwe banned and censored protest singer Viomak has launched her own news site www.viomaknews.com. The news site which features her own stories and opinions is like a diary of her musical activism life since 2005.

The singer whose stories are banned in State newspapers for her stance against ZANUPF and Mugabe also promotes freedom of expression through music in a country that is struggling politically, economically and socially .She was also banned by the independent Zimbabwe Standard newspaper after she suspected the paper's reporter Vusumuzi Sifile-Sibanda of being a CIO.

With six protest music albums under her name the singer cum political activist is well known for her courage in tackling the situation in Zimbabwe head on through protest music and vibrant activism that has also seen her spearhead a campaign to have Zimbabwe leaders declare their personal assets to monitor corruption.

Her activism and outspokenness has seen her amass a lot of enemies which is one reason why she is banned in Zimbabwe newspapers. Zimbabwe's Censorship and Entertainment Control Act censors undesirable music and it doesn't allow the distribution or selling of undesirable recordings so writing her stories in State newspaper is forbidden.

The singer also runs an internet radio station VOTO (Voices of the Oppressed) that promotes the work of Zimbabwe protest artists. Her protest music is banned on state radio so in 2007, she was instrumental in setting up an internet radio station to evade music censorship.

A Nigerian Islamic Sharia court has banned Twitter and Facebook debates on the country's first wrist amputation for theft, according to court papers seen by AFP.

A Kaduna court ordered the Civil Rights Congress (CRC), one of the country's leading rights groups, to suspend its Twitter and Facebook online debates on the amputation, which was carried out in 2000.

The court granted an interim injunction restraining the respondents either by themselves or their agents... from opening a chat forum on Facebook, Twitter, or any blog for the purpose of the debate on the amputation of Malam Buba Bello Jangebe, said the order.

Jangebe was the first person to have had his right hand amputated on the orders of a Sharia court in Zamfara State, a year after 12 northern Nigerian states adopted the strict Islamic penal code.

The order followed a suit filed by the Association of Muslim Brotherhood of Nigeria, a pro-Sharia group based in the northern political capital of Kaduna, which argued that Internet forums would be used as a mockery of the Sharia system as negative issues will be discussed.

International shortwave radio monitors have confirmed that VOA broadcasts in the Amharic language are being jammed in Ethiopia.

The static began February 22 on all five VOA shortwave frequencies aimed at East Africa in the 25 and 31-meter shortwave bands.

The other foreign broadcast heard in Ethiopia, the German government's Deutsche Welle Amharic language program, also reports experiencing some interference, in the past few days.

VOA and Deutsche Welle were jammed around the time of the last parliament election in 2005, and again before the 2008 nationwide local elections. The next crucial parliament vote is scheduled for May 23.

Ethiopian officials have often described VOA's Amharic Service as the voice of the opposition, saying its broadcasts reveal an anti-government bias.

The Voice of America is a multi-media international broadcasting service funded by the U.S. Government. VOA broadcasts more than 1,500 hours of news and other programming every week in 49 languages.

Update: More Damning Jamming

23rd March 2010. Based on article from portalangop.co.ao

The United States condemned Ethiopia's blocking of Voice of America broadcasts.

Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi earlier admitted to jamming the US government-funded VOA broadcasts in Amharic, saying he was prepared to censor the broadcasts because of the service's destabilizing propaganda.

Update: Website Blocked

1st April 2010. See article from indexoncensorship.org

The Ethiopian government has been accused of blocking the website of US broadcaster Voice of America (VOA) as a row over press intimidation continues to escalate in the Horn of Africa. Residents of the capital Addis Ababa have been unable to access the site since early on Sunday,

Over the past few years, Facebook has come under scrutiny a number of times for its seeming hypocrisy on what types of groups it deems inappropriate. Although the site's terms of service (TOS) ban everything from nudity, to speech deemed hateful, to using a pseudonym to open an account, they are selectively enforced.

The TOS appear only to be enforced when enough users report a group as inappropriate, and once a group is removed, its creators often find it impossible to get it back. Users whose personal accounts are removed sometimes create a new account, only to find it deleted again soon afterward.

Moroccan activist Kacem El Ghazzali was recently subjected to Facebook's TOS when a group he had created, entitled Jeunes pour la séparation entre Religion et Enseignement (youth for the separation between religion and education), was promptly removed. El Ghazzali emailed Facebook, but received no response. Two days later, his personal account had been deleted from Facebook as well. He says that while the group was live, he received emails from Muslims who opposed the group, as well as other groups he had created.

El Ghazzali's group, and his account, both appear to have been well within both U.S. law and Facebook's TOS. Why then, did Facebook delete them? Was it under pressure from another country's government, or did enough people simply report the group that Facebook automatically removed it? In any case, why doesn't Facebook offer recourse for its users to report accounts and groups removed in error, as other sites such as YouTube and Blogger do?

Since his account and groups do not appear to be in violation of Facebook's TOS, it seems that Facebook is now policing speech, possibly at the behest of a foreign government.

Ivory Coast has suspended satellite TV news station France 24 over a headline reporting many deaths during a protest, the government said on Wednesday, despite the fact that five people were killed.

The National Council for Audiovisual Communication scrambled France 24's signal late on Monday and it has not been restored.

The council (CNCA) President Franck Kouassi told Reuters the station would remain suspended until further notice.

Sharia police ordered the closure of an annual music festival funded and organised by the French embassy in northern Nigeria at the weekend.

We have banned the music festival for the reason that we were not notified and our permission was not sought, Abubakar Rabo Abdulkarim, head of the film censorship board in the northern Kano region, told AFP.

The French embassy said they had been told they could not stage the event at the local French cultural centre as they did not have prior authorisation.

Following a notification by the Kano state censorship board, the Kano festival of music is cancelled the French embassy said in a statement emailed to AFP.

The closure of the daring magazine Le Journal Hebdomadaire is a sign of renewed authoritarianism in Morocco

Last Thursday, I learned from the man behind Le Journal, Abou Bakr Jamai, that bailiffs had come to the magazine's office, just as its journalists were putting the final touches on a new issue, to seize its assets. A series of crippling libel fines and debts to the tax authorities had driven it to bankruptcy. We can already officially announce the death of Le Journal, Jamai told me. I was shaken to learn that no more issues of Le Journal would appear, although not surprised. It had become clear for several years that the palace – whether the king himself or his coterie of advisers – had given up on trying to co-opt or intimidate the magazine, as it has done with many other publications, and would sooner or later succeed in pushing it into oblivion by economic means.

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Kenya's government has gazetted new laws that will regulate the broadcast media, setting the stage for a battle with Media Owners and journalists.

The government announced that the Kenya Communications (Broadcasting) regulations 2009 became law from January 1, this year, and TV stations must now brace for hard times including possible closure.

The chairman of the Kenya Editors' Guild, Macharia Gaitho, described the regulations as retrogressive and obnoxious. The Ministry of Information, he said, had employed subterfuge and deceit in publishing the regulations despite an agreement with media partners last year mediated by Prime Minister Raila Odinga.

The toughest rules include censorship of content, limiting sex talk on FM radio stations and adult movies on television to after 10pm, banning of cross media ownership and setting rules for political coverage during general elections.

Information and Communication PS Bitange Ndemo said: There is nowhere in world where there is absolute freedom. We have to curtail some freedom for the sake of the majority, the PS said.

The new rules also introduced term licences where media owners will have seven years before reapplying for frequencies unlike in the past when the period was unlimited. Those with inactive frequencies will have to surrender them.

Any person who contravenes any provision of these regulations commits an offence and on conviction shall be liable to a fine not exceeding a million shillings or to imprisonment for a term not exceeding three years, or both.

The laws state in part that a licensee shall generally ensure that no broadcasts by its station contains the use of offensive language, including profanity and blasphemy, presents sexual matters in an explicit and offensive manner, or glorifies violence.

The content should not incite or perpetuate hatred or vilify any person or section of the community on account of race, ethnicity, nationality, gender, sexual preference, age, disability, religion or culture.

Algeria is the latest Arab country to join the ranks of Internet filterers, leaving only Iraq, Egypt, Libya, and Lebanon without widespread filtering.

The first report of a blocked site came about a week ago, when users on Twitter reported www.rachad.org, the site of political movement Mouvement Rachad to be blocked. The sites have since been reported to Herdict.

The blog Algerian Review outlines the filtering and calls on Algerian Internet users to sign a petition against the creation of a filtering regime