Journalists and Bloggers

A Chinese court has sentenced an activist to nine months in jail in a prosecution said to illustrate the authoritarian government's unease about social campaigners active on the internet.

Wang Lihong was jailed on the vaguely-worded charge of creating a disturbance.

Her son Qi Jianxiang said the family would appeal because we think it is not fair. She committed no crime.

The charge stemmed from a protest Ms Wang took part in last year outside a southern China courthouse where three bloggers were on trial.

China denies knowledge of several cases of dissidents who have recently disappeared. These include an ethnic Chinese-Australian man who was an outspoken critic of the Chinese government, online, and a lawyer who was the focus of a report by a United Nations human rights group.

Reporters asked about two specific cases at a Foreign Ministry briefing.

Gao Zhisheng is a human rights lawyer who disappeared into police custody, nearly a year ago. The U.N. working group has issued a report accusing the Chinese government of detaining Gao, in violation of Chinese and international law. The group expressed regret that the government did not provide the information it had requested.

Meanwhile, Sino-Australian blogger Yang Hengjun has disappeared. Yang has not been seen since he called a friend from the southern Chinese city, Guangzhou, Sunday, and said he was being followed by three men.

In a February interview, Yang indicated that there is what he described as high pressure not to write anything online about Egypt, where a mass uprising forced the president to resign.

Meanwhile, news of the disappearances come amid legal developments in other cases, including the announcement of official subversion charges against detained blogger Ran Yunfei and a 10-year jail sentence to activist Liu Xianbin, who was convicted of subversion.

Update: Yang Hengjun 'Released'

31st March 2011. See article from rfa.org

Top Chinese-language blogger and Australian national Yang Hengjun has resurfaced in China following fears that he might have been detained as part of a crackdown on outspoken netizens.

His friend, Feng Chongyi, an associate professor in China Studies at the University of Technology in Sydney, said Yang had given a pre-arranged signal that meant he had been detained by state security police. Feng said he saw Yang's denial of detention as a likely condition of his release.

It's my guess that the authorities just want the situation to calm down and then will let him walk away, but he has to deny that he was held by authorities until he leaves China, Feng was quoted by the AP as saying.

Tursunjan Hezim, Uighur editor of well known website Bilik, has reportedly been given a seven-year prison sentence.

The sentence was handed down for unknown charges at a secret trial in July 2010, but has only been made public now.

Hezim had been in detention at a secret location since 2009, after ethnic riots broke out in the Chinese north-western region of Xinjiang.

According to a Chinese Human Rights Defenders' tweet, human rights activist Wang Yi, real name Cheng Jianping, was sentenced to one year of hard labour 're-education' for forwarding a political satire post about the anti-Japanese Protest in Twitter.

XinXiang city Labour Re-education Committee. stated that she had disturbed the public order.

On 17 of October, Wang Yi retweeted a post by Hua Chunhui who satirically challenged the anti-Japanese angry youths in China by inviting them to destroy the Japan pavilion in Shanghai Expo. She added a comment, Angry youth, come forward and break the pavilion! in her retweet.

The police interpreted her satire as a public order disturbance and asked the Labour Re-education committee to sentence her to one year labour camp.

According to Xiaoyong tweets, Wang Yi has became an online activist since 2006 and has helped a number of human rights activists to raise funds and participated in a number of flash mob actions.

In one of the latest retrograde developments, a fine of 20,000 pounds (2,500 euros) that had been imposed on Kareem Reda, who writes the blog Sarkha, was upheld on appeal on 7 September.

The blogger was fined as a result of a suit by Petrograde, a natural gas company, that accused him of defaming and insulting the company, damaging its interests and trying to harm the national economy because he launched a page on Facebook calling on people to boycott its services and not pay their gas bills it as long as it continued to export gas to Israel at below-market prices.

The international press freedom NGO Reporters Without Borders is very worried about the fate of the blogger Maikel Nabil Sanad and calls for his immediate and unconditional release in order to preserve the democratic nature of Egypt's political transition.

Freeing the first prisoner of conscience since the revolution would be a powerful symbolic gesture, one that the entire international community would see as a sign of a commitment to openness.

Sanad, who began a hunger strike on 23 August, is now refusing to drink and already has heart problems. Detained since March, his physical condition is very alarming and needs urgent intervention.

While Sanad's hunger strike is a personal decision, the authorities are responsible for the cause, an unjust and anti-democratic political imprisonment, Reporters Without Borders secretary-general Jean-Franc,ois Julliard said. If he does not resume drinking, he could very soon die in detention and the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces would have to take full responsibility. Held for exercising his right to freedom of expression, Sanad must not become the symbol of a repressive and unjust post-Mubarak Egypt.

Update: 2 years in jail

18th December 2011. See article from cpj.org

The Committee to Protect Journalists condemns the sentencing of Egyptian blogger Maikel Nabil Sanad by a military court to two years in prison and a fine for insulting the military and calls for his immediate, unconditional release. Sanad, initially arrested in March was sentenced in April by a military court to three years in prison.

Today's military court ruling hardly amounts to a reduction of the sentence since Sanad has already been imprisoned for nine months, said Mohamed Abdel Dayem, CPJ's Middle East and North Africa program coordinator. Sanad, who was subjected to the inherently arbitrary proceedings of a military tribunal, should not have been imprisoned in the first place.

The Egyptian authorities must immediately drop charges against a woman blogger and activist accused of defaming the military on Twitter, Amnesty International said today.

Asmaa Mahfouz, 26, was summoned by military prosecutors on Sunday and later released on bail of 20,000 Egyptian pounds ($3,356) after posting messages on the social media network expressing concerns about the Egyptian justice system and the actions of the military government, the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF).

• Asmaa Mahfouz is facing a military trial merely for posting comments which criticize the Egyptian military justice system and do not at all appear to represent a call to violence, said Malcolm Smart, Amnesty International's Director for Middle East and North Africa.
• The Egyptian authorities' decision to refer Asmaa Mahfouz to a military court seems intended to send a message to those critical of the authorities that dissent will not be tolerated. The charges against her must be dropped immediately, he said.

A military court in Egypt has sentenced an internet activist to three years in jail for criticising the armed forces.

Maikel Nabil was arrested last month for blogs that criticised the army's role during anti-government protests.

The 26-year-old is thought to be the first blogger jailed in Egypt since the ousting of President Hosni Mubarak.

Lawyers representing Maikel Nabil have criticised the conduct of the military court and will petition the head of the court to reverse its decision and free Nabil.

For the second time in Egypt an internet user is going to face a military trial. Ahmed Hassan Basiouny is facing a military trial this month after being accused by the military prosecution for:

Broadcasting secrets of defense via the Internet, and publishing news and information related to the Armed Forces of Egypt by creating a website titled Packing and Recruitment Management in Egypt and answering questions of youth applying to the recruitment

Basiouny created a Facebook page late in 2009 to provide assistance and guidelines on recruitment.

Hisham Mubarak Law Center, local rights group, invited [Ar] human rights organization to form legal defense team to defense Basiouny before the military court.

Abdul Kareem Nabeel Suleiman, an Egyptian blogger serving a four-year prison term for inciting unrest and antipathy to Islam, has not been released despite serving out the end of his sentence, journalists and activists close to Suleiman say.

An organisation formed to protest Suleiman's conviction had expected that the Alexandria native would be released on Friday, but Suleiman is apparently still being held in Alexandria's Borg al-Arab prison.

The Free Kareem Coalition, a multi-national group of activists formed to protest Suleiman's conviction, had written in a blog post on Thursday that Suleiman would be released the next day.

Tarek Elfaramawi, a freelance photographer and resident of Alexandria who had been assigned to photograph Suleiman after his release, told Al Jazeera that the release had not happened.

Basem Fathy, a blogger and Cairo-based projects director for the Egyptian Democracy Academy, said political activists close to Suleiman told him that Suleiman had not been released.

Update: Released

21st November 2010. Based on article from indexoncensorship.org

Online free expression activists around the world are rejoicing at the news that jailed Egyptian blogger Kareem Amer has been freed and had returned to his family's Alexandria home.

Amer's four-year jail sentence actually ended on 5 November, but the Egyptian authorities held on to him for nearly two weeks extra — prompting protests from Amnesty International and others. The Egyptian government — which grants itself sweeping powers under the so-called emergency laws— has a history of acting in defiance of its own judiciary. This includes openly ignoring court-ordered releases, or releasing a suspect and then immediately re-arresting him.

Nama Jafari, blogger and journalist was arrested. He was editor of a cultural site. He also wrote a book called a gathering in solitary confinement.

Iranian blogger Mehdi Khazali has been sentenced to 13 years and 10 months in prison, followed by 10 years in exile.

Khazali was arrested about a month ago and has been on a hunger strike in prison.

The outspoken blogger and ophthalmologist has been detained a number of times in the past two years for writing critically about Iranian President Mahmud Ahmadinejad and the regime's policies.

Iranian authorities have lately been taking an even harder line against bloggers and people who use social media. Last week, they arrested two people who had organized an online beauty contest on Facebook.

Khazali's lawyer told RFE/RL's Radio Farda that he will appeal the sentence.

Mohammad Sadegh Honarvar Shojayi, a blogger and cleric started his hunger strike on Monday.

He was arrested by the Prosecutor General on charges of conducting an interview with the reformist Kalameh website.

Sakhi Rigi has been sentenced to 20 years in prison for critiquing the 2009 Iranian presidential elections on his blog. He was arrested in 18 June 2009 and has received the longest sentence given to an Iranian blogger.

Also Hossein Derakhshan lost his appeal against a 19-year prison sentence. Known as the blogfather, Derakhshan championed the internet as a means of social reform. He has been in prison since his arrest in 2008 for making disparaging remarks about important Shiite leaders.

Both Derakhshan and Rigi were convicted of aiding enemy states and propaganda against the Islamic system.

Human rights activists news agency, reports [fa] that Ali Pour Soleiman, a blogger and teacher was arrested in Iran a few days ago. He was a member of Association of Teachers and wrote [fa] in Sokhane Molem (means teacher's word) blog.

The Iranian judiciary has sentenced Kaveh Kermanshahi, a member of the Kurdish Human Rights Organisation to five years in prison for actions against national security and propaganda against the regime.

Blogger Navid Khanjani convicted on the same charges as well as membership of illegal human rights organisations. He was given a 12 year prison sentence.

Jordan authorities must undertake a serious investigation into the stabbing of a blogger who wrote critically about the Jordanian royal family, the Committee to Protect Journalists said today.

Enass Musallam told CPJ she was stabbed by a masked assailant while leaving a cafe' in the capital, Amman, on February 20. Musallam said a man in a face mask and gloves grabbed her from behind and said, In the name of His Royal Majesty and the prince, before he stabbed her just above the stomach. He then put the knife to her throat and said, Next time, you will be slaughtered, before pushing her down the stairs and running away, she said. The journalist said a friend drove her to the hospital, where she underwent surgery and remained for five days.

Musallam told CPJ that the day before she was stabbed, she wrote an article on her blog that said Prince Hassan bin Talal's comments about dispersing the protesters in Amman's Palm Tree Square were condescending and insulting. She has also criticized the government for corruption on her blog, CPJ research shows.

Irwan Abdul Raman, a blogger and editor better known as Hassan Skodeng, who was facing a one year prison sentence and a hefty fine for writing a satirical blog, has had the charges against him dropped.

He had been accused of publishing online content deemed obscene, indecent, false, menacing or offensive in character with malicious intent.

He had published a satirical article on his blog claiming that the main electricity firm, Tenaga Nasional Berhad, would allegedly sue the environmental group World Wildlife Fund for urging people to switch off their lights for the annual Earth Hour initiative.

IRachid Nini, the editor of one of Morocco's leading newspapers, has been sentenced to a year in prison and fined 100 euros after he was convicted of compromising the security and integrity of the nation and citizens. Nini had been held for over two months before the trial took place and had been refused bail three times.

A number of his editorials had attempted to expose the corrupt practices of the Morrocan government.

Two Shiite bloggers who were arrested for their coverage of peaceful demonstrations in Shia-majority area of Qatif have been released by Saudi security authorities.

The two young men, Mustafa Badr Al-Mubarak and Sayyid Hussein Kadham Al-Hashem, were arrested on 27 April 2011 when security forces broke into their homes and confiscated their laptops. Their blogs contained extensive coverage of their involvement in human rights activism and several peaceful demonstrations.

Since the street protest movement began in March 2011 in Syria, threats and physical attacks against journalists have increased. The list of detained bloggers and journalists gets longer and includes foreign journalists arrested and deported. Among the latest, prominent blogger and programmer Hussein Ghrer, who disappeared on October 24.

On October 27 Reporters Without Borders published a list that includes some of the journalists, bloggers and cyber-activists identified as currently detained in the country:

• Qais Abatili, a very active netizen who was arrested on 25 September.
• Nizar Al-Baba, an online activist who has been held since 21 September.
• Malak Al-Shanawany, a blogger and activist who contributes to many websites. She was arrested on a Damascus street on 22 September. She has been arrested twice before.
• Jehad Jamal, a blogger better known by the pseudonym of Milan, who has been held since 21 September.
• Nizar Adleh, a journalist who contributes to many websites. He has been held since 6 September.
• Miraal Brourda, a writer and poet who contributes to many websites.
• Ahmed Bilal, a producer for Falesteen TV who was arrested in the Damascus suburb of Mo'adamieh on 13 September.
• Amer Matar, a journalist with the daily Al-Hayat, who was arrested on 4 September. This was his second arrest.
• Alwan Zouaiter, a journalist who was writing for many Lebanese dailies. He was arrested by intelligence officials in the northern city of Raqqah after returning from Libya. He was initially sentenced to five years in prison for allegedly contacting the Syrian opposition while abroad. The sentence was subsequently reduced to 13 months.
• Omar Abdel Salam
• Amer Al-As'ad, a first-year information technology student who also writes as a journalist for many Arabic-language dailies. He was arrested on 3 July and arrested again on 4 August. There has been no news of him since then.
• Hanadi Zahlout, a freelance journalist who has written many articles for online publications. He was arrested for the second time on 25 July, released four days later and re-arrested on 4 August. He is currently in Adra prison.
• Omar Al-As'ad, a journalist who writes for many Arabic-language dailies. He is also a final-year information technology student. He was arrested on 5 July and re-arrested on 4 August. There has been no news of him since then.
• Rudy Othman and Asim Hamsho, two bloggers who were arrested at the start of August.
• Abd Qabani, a netizen arrested on 8 August.
• Ammar Sa'ib, a netizen arrested on 1 August in Damascus.
• Mohamed Tahan Jamal, a member of the League of Arab Writers and Union of Journalists, who was arrested on 20 July after signing the Aleppo Appeal for the Nation.
• Abd Al-Majid Tamer and Mahmoud Asem Al-Mohamed, two journalists working for Kurdish news websites who were arrested on 31 May.
• Manaf Al Zeitoun, who was arrested on 25 March. There has been no news of him since his arrest.

A Syrian blogger Ahmad Abu al-Khair reported has been arrested. Security forces allegedly have also confiscated his personal computers. Currently his whereabouts and the reason behind his arrest are unknown.

Abu al-Khair is veteran blogger who started writing in 2005. His blog ملتقيات أحمد Ahmadblogs covers a plethora of subjects ranging from book reviews to comments on recent uprisings in the Arab World. He is a co-founder of the popular Syrian blogs aggregator Almudawen, and an administrator at Ektob, a blogging platform. Abu al-Khair specializes in media, and according to his Facebook profile he's interested in alternative media and citizen journalism.

The Syrian blogosphere is already buzzing with the news, and a Facebook page in support of him now has over a hundred members.

A state security court in Syria has sentenced a teenaged blogger to five years in prison for spying, human rights groups say.

The court in Damascus found 19-year-old Tal al-Mallohi guilty of revealing information to a foreign country.

Ms Mallohi's blog contained poetry and social commentary that focused mostly on the suffering of Palestinians.

Norawase Yotpiyasathien, a business administration student who graduated this summer from Kasetsart University, was arrested last week for his online blog posts. He is the youngest and the latest victim of Thailand's lese majeste law, and his arrest has caused deep dismay among many students.

Norawase was arrested on 5 August in Bangkok after a complaint was laid by Kasetsart's Deputy Rector of Student Affairs Nipon Limlamtong, who in turn was reportedly tipped off by students from the same university.

He was charged under Thailand's lese majeste law and 2007 Computer Crimes Act for writing the blog. Combined, these could lead to up to 18 years in prison.

The lese majeste law has a conviction rate as high as 94% and punishment of up to 15 years in prison for anyone who defames, insults or threatens the King, the Queen, the heir to the throne or the Regent.

The student was released on bail last week after three nights in Bangkok Remand Prison, when his parents put up a 1.6 million baht (US$54,000) bond.

Cem Büyükçakir, founder and general publications director of the Haberin Yeri website was given an eleven-month jail sentence for publishing a reader's comment implying that Turkish President Abdullah Gül descended from an Armenian family.

Abdullah Gül was the recipient of this year's Chatham House prize for the statesman who made the most significant contribution to the improvement of international relations in the previous year.

A prominent blogger and activist who called for democratic reform in the United Arab Emirates has been charged with possession of alcohol after being arrested last week, his lawyer said.

Ahmed Mansoor had received death threats online, which he said were for joining a petition demanding wider political representation and legislative powers for the Federal National Council, a parliamentary-style body.

Two other men, a blogger and a political commentator, were detained earlier this week, the lawyer for all three said.

The lawyer, Abdulhamid al-Kumaity, said police had told him Mansoor was charged with possession of alcohol, but he said there was no evidence he was carrying any.

The Vietnamese authorities must immediately release a French-Vietnamese blogger who has been sentenced to three years in prison on national security charges, Amnesty International said.

Professor Pham Minh Hoang, a maths lecturer who holds dual nationality, was accused of writing articles that blackened the image of the country by the judge at the trial in Ho Chi Minh City.

He told the court his writings were not aimed at overthrowing anyone, and that Vietnam needs to be more democratic, reports said.

To imprison a blogger for peacefully exercising his right to freedom of expression is outrageous. The authorities should immediately release Professor Hoang, and stop their harsh crackdown on peaceful government critics and activists said Donna Guest, Amnesty International's Deputy Director for the Asia-Pacific.

Tuesday's sentence, and the continuing arrests of activists and bloggers paint an increasingly bleak picture of freedom of expression and association in Viet Nam, she said.

Professor Pham Minh Hoang, who is a member of the banned US-based opposition group Viet Tan, joined other activists in criticizing a Chinese-backed bauxite mine in Viet Nam's Central Highlands, which they believe risks causing environmental degradation in the area.

Update: Sentence halved

2nd December 2011. See article from indexoncensorship.org

A Vietnamese court have halved the jail sentence of a blogger after international pressure.

Pham Minh Hoang was sentenced to three years imprisonment for attempted subversion in August this year after he wrote 33 articles under a pseudonym, which were ruled by the court to blacken the image of the country and aimed to topple the government.

Hoang will be released on January 13 after serving a 17-month sentence, but will then serve three years of house arrest.

Vietnamese authorities have dropped charges against a female blogger who was detained for :infringing on the interests of the state. She was arrested for defamation after describing a senior official's son as a womanizer.

Le Nguyen Huong Tra, who blogged under the pseudonym Co Gai Do Long, was arrested last October and released on bail this January. Authorities have declared her actions to be less serious than first thought.

Police have arrested Phan Thanh Hai, a blogger who writes under the name Anh Ba Saigon (Saigon Brother Three), after raiding his Ho Chi Minh City home, according to Agence France-Presse. Police seized his desktop and laptop computers, along with documents he had printed from the Internet, his wife, Nguyen Thi Lien, told AFP.

Police read us an arrest order for his provisional four-month detention, Lien told AFP. They said they have evidence of his writing and publication of false information on his blog. Hai's blog touched on issues considered sensitive by the authorities, including maritime disputes with China and a controversial bauxite mining project involving Chinese investments.