Belarussian journalists and bloggers issued an online protest last Wednesday by not posting anything for an hour or using a black banner, lashing out against the "On Mass Media" law that the government adopted without public hearings and international expert examinations, Belarussian Association of Journalists (BAJ) reported.

Last Tuesday the House of Representatives of the Belarus National Assembly approved the law after its second reading, Jurist reported. The BAJ said that the law violates the freedoms outlined in articles 33 and 34 of the constitution.

Belarus media outlets are now banned from getting foreign financial backing and are required to register with the government. Reporters Without Borders termed the law as "repressive" and predict that censorship will increase, the Globe reported.

The Committee to Protect Journalists is deeply troubled by an Azerbaijan court’s decision on to convict the editor of a small, minority newspaper on a treason charge and to sentence him to 10 years in prison. Novruzali Mamedov, editor of now-defunct Talyshi Sado (Voice of the Talysh), was tried in closed-door proceedings that began in March.

A secretary for the newspaper, Elman Quliyev, was convicted under the same charge and sentenced to six years in prison.

We condemn the heavy prison sentence handed to Novruzali Mamedov after a closed trial in the absence of defense counsel, CPJ Europe and Central Asia Program Coordinator Nina Ognianova said: Authorities should make evidence against Mamedov public, and Azerbaijan should work to remedy, not aggravate, its record of jailing journalists on trumped-up charges.

Mamedov was convicted of treason under Article 247 of Azerbaijan’s penal code for what the prosecution called distribution of Talysh nationalist ideas and attempts to destroy the foundations of the Azerbaijani state, the independent news agency Regnum reported. News reports said the case was based on an allegation that Mamedov had received money from Iran to publish the newspaper.

Defense lawyer Ramiz Mamedov told the U.S.-government funded Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty that the case was fabricated.

A new campaign has swung into action in Uzbekistan protesting against government censorship of the internet.

News agencies and media outlets have joined forced to fight back against the crackdown. Websites which have been suspended or censored are uniting to take part, placing a special symbol online to indicate support.

The purge on free and independent information was imposed in Uzbekistan after the Andijan ‘massacre’ in May 2005. The opposition claims it was a massacre of civilians in which up to 1,000 people could have been killed. The exact number of victims is still uncertain, but the bodies of many of those who died were allegedly hidden in mass graves.

What followed was countless reports of unprecedented media repression. Hundreds of websites have been banned for Uzbek internet-users since those events. Among them are websites of opposition political parties as well as a range of independent and opposition media.

International watchdogs say that Uzbekistan is an enemy of the internet and on a list of the world’s ‘internet-censors’, along with Cuba, North Korea, China, Vietnam, Tunisia and Burma.

One of Sudan's leading independent papers suspended work on Thursday, saying censorship by authorities had made it impossible to function.

Ajras al-Huriya, or the Bells of Freedom, said it had not been able to publish for two days this week after Sudanese security arrived and ordered the removal of up to nine articles and columns minutes before the paper went to the printing press.

They, the security elements, are replacing the role of the editor-in-chief, said deputy chief editor, Fayez el-Sheikh el-Silaik: We want to send a very strong message to the international community and the political forces that we are in a very dangerous situation -- freedom is in danger now. We cannot even write about the fact that there is censorship.

Update: Bells Resume

25th June 2008

One of Sudan's leading independent newspapers resumed publication on Tuesday after halting its presses in protest at government censorship of the media.

Ajras al-Huriya, or the Bells of Freedom, which stopped printing on Thursday, said it had been particularly targeted by the authorities who had removed up to nine articles just before the paper went to press last week.

Today we have resumed publishing after talks with political parties and civil society organisations, said editor Abdel Moneim Suleiman.

Ajras al-Huriya said they were not allowed to print stories about Darfur, Chad, the censorship itself or anything critical of the ruling National Congress Party.

The European Court of Human Rights has ruled that Armenia’s repeated denials of a broadcasting license to the independent A1+ television station violated Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights. According to the verdict, the Armenian government must pay the station 20,000 euros in damages.

Famous for its criticism of Armenian authorities, A1+ was forced off the air in 2002 when the National Committee on Television and Radio—a regulatory body whose members are directly appointed by the president—awarded the station’s frequency to another company. Since then, the agency has repeatedly rejected A1+ applications for a broadcasting license—moves widely viewed as retaliation for the station’s journalism. When local courts dismissed A1+ appeals as unfounded, station owner Mesrop Movsesyan filed an appeal with the Strasbourg-based court in 2004.

The court found that the repeated and unexplained denials violated the right to impart information and ideas as outlined in the European Convention on Human Rights.

The publisher and editor of an Urdu-language newspaper in Houston, Pakistan Times USA, has received telephone death threats, and thousands of copies of the free weekly were removed in bulk from dozens of locations in southeastern Texas.

The threats and theft of the papers came after the Pakistan Times USA published an advertisement by the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community, a sect deemed heretical by some Muslims.

The ad briefly described the Ahmadiyya Muslim faith and announced a centennial celebration of the sect to be held in Houston.

In accordance with our policy of equal coverage to all faiths we accepted the ad, Publisher and Editor Najam Ali told CPJ. Pakistan Times USA ran the advertisement on Thursday, May 22. The following day some Islamic clerics at local mosques in Houston denounced the paper for running the ad by the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community, Ali told CPJ. He said he soon began receiving several threatening phone calls about having published the ad.

We’re going to burn your house [in Houston], and we’re going to burn your house in Pakistan, too, Ali said one caller threatened on May 24. He said he immediately reported the threat to the Houston Police Department.

Police in the Kyrgyz capital of Bishkek raided the newsroom of independent newspaper De-Facto on June 14, taking all its financial records, confiscating computers, and sealing the newsroom, the independent regional news Web site Ferghana reported. The paper was shut down after it published a letter to Kyrgyzstan’s president and other public officials that alleged official corruption.

The raid took place after the prosecutor general’s office opened a criminal investigation into the paper’s publication of a letter that they say was distribution of knowingly false denunciation, Cholpon Orozobekova, De-Facto founder and editor-in-chief, told CPJ. The charge would carry a maximum penalty of five years in prison.

International pressure is all that stands between a young journalism student and the death penalty, say his supporters.

A subdued, anxious crowd filled the courtroom of the Kabul Appeal Court on June 15 for the latest installment in the case of Sayed Parwez Kambakhsh, the Afghan journalism student facing a death sentence for blasphemy.

There was little evidence of the international media in the courtroom, and the few foreign diplomats present sat quietly, some conferring with the defence from time to time.

The lack of a strong international presence could be bad news for Kambakhsh. Several sources close to the case have said international attention is the only thing sustaining his appeal.

If the eyes of the world were not on him, this judge would just hang Kambakhsh, said one insider, speaking on condition of anonymity.

Presiding judge Abdul Salam Qazizada has weathered several Afghan administrations. He is a holdover from the Taleban regime, and his antagonism to the defendant was visible.

By the end of the June 15 session, it was clear there was to be no swift end to proceedings against Kambakhsh, 23, who is accused of insulting Islam and abusing the Holy Prophet Mohammad. For the fourth time in the past 30 days, the case was adjourned without a decision.

During the session, Qazizada appeared to take on the role of prosecutor rather than impartial judge, engaging in a legal duel with defence attorney Mohammad Afzal Nooristani. Lacking a gavel, he repeatedly banged his pen against his microphone in an effort to halt Nooristani’s defence of his client.

Just tell me why you did these things, insisted Qazizada. What were your motives?

I cannot give you reasons, since I did not do anything, responded Kambakhsh.

The young student is accused of downloading and distributing a text from the internet that criticises, sometimes quite harshly, Islam’s treatment of women. The prosecution contends that Kambakhsh added several paragraphs of his own, and that this proves he is “against Islam”.

The defendant’s brother, Sayed Yaqub Ibrahimi, who has been a reporter with IWPR for the past six years, was visibly upset by the day’s events. Welcome to the Middle Ages, he grimaced.

A foreign diplomat also expressed consternation at the way the trial was being conducted. I do not see any way out, said the diplomat, speaking on condition of anonmity.

On June 4th, 2008, a Court from the Moldavian capital of Kishinev ordered the sequestration of personal computers of about 12 young people who expressed critical opinions against the ruling communist party of the Republic of Moldavia on Internet forums and news portals.

According to Curaj.Net. these young people can be charged for making illegal public calls for the overthrow of the constitutional order and threatening the statality and territorial integrity of the Republic of Moldavia.

The International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) is extremely concerned that two popular talk programs transmitted to Pakistan from Dubai-based GEO TV have been taken off air at the request of the Government of United Arab Emirates (UAE).

The IFJ calls on the UAE Government to explain why, and on whose authority, it asked the independent Pakistan television broadcaster to cancel the programs.

The Pakistan Federal Union of Journalists (PFUJ) said the owner of GEO, Shakeelur Rehman, confirmed that UAE authorities had asked GEO to discontinue broadcasting Capital Talk, hosted by Islamabad-based Hamid Mir, and Meray Mutabek, hosted by Dubai-based Shahid Masood.

UAE authorities reportedly told GEO management that they did not want anything transmitted from Dubai to disturb UAE’s relationship with friendly countries.

Mir told the IFJ that he had received messages in recent weeks that President Musharraf was displeased with his program. Mir was informed this morning, as he prepared for his regular Thursday program, that the closure of both shows came into force at midnight on June 11.

Capital Talk had only returned to air in early March 2008 after being banned during the November state of emergency.

The PFUJ was informed that the new bans would be debated when Pakistan’s Parliament next meets on June 14.

World chess star turned political activist Garry Kasparov told world news industry leaders that Prime Minister Vladimir Putin had assaulted press freedoms in Russia, and urged them to challenge Kremlin leaders over the issue.

Kasparov said Putin and his colleagues must be faced with complaints about press freedoms. Make sure they have to respond and make sure your governments raise the issue, he told about 200 senior news industry executives at an invitation-only luncheon during the World Newspaper Congress in Sweden.

Russian President Dmitry Medvedev urged the country's parliament to scrap a bill widely seen as restrictive to the media. It was not immediately clear whether Medvedev's move signaled his intention to take a more liberal course compared to Putin, his predecessor and mentor, whose eight-year tenure saw a steady rollback of post-Soviet media and political freedoms.

The congress also criticized the U.N. Human Rights Council, claiming it has repeatedly sought to undermine freedom of the press to protect religious sensibilities. The group adopted a resolution saying the council's proper role is to defend freedom of expression and not to support the censorship of opinion at the request of autocracies.

A California-based blogger who allegedly accused a judge of "prostituting herself" has been arrested and charged in Singapore.

Gopalan Nair, a former Singapore lawyer who is now a US citizen, was arrested in the city-state and charged with insulting a public servant, his lawyer Chia Ti Lik told AFP.

Nair was later remanded in custody for one more week as the authorities said they needed to investigate further.

According to a court document, Nair is charged with insulting Justice Belinda Ang Saw Ean by sending an email which said she was throughout prostituting herself during the entire proceedings, by being nothing more than an employee of Mr Lee Kuan Yew and his son and carrying out their orders.

Nair's lawyer Chia said the comments essentially repeated those Nair made in a recent blog about a defamation case filed by Singapore's leaders against an opposition party and its members.

In the blog, Nair strongly criticised a three-day legal hearing last week at which Singapore founding father Lee Kuan Yew and his son, Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong, testified.

In another post on his blog Saturday, Nair taunted authorities, saying he was in Singapore at a particular hotel, and also gave his phone number: I am now within your jurisdiction... What are you going to do about it?".

Nair is charged with insulting a public servant, which on conviction carries a maximum fine of 5,000 dollars (3,660 US) or one year in prison.

Update: On Trial

12th September 2008

US blogger and attorney Gopalan Nair appeared in the Singaporean Supreme Court and pleaded not guilty to insulting a public servant.

Nair is on trial for accusing a judge of prostituting herself in a defamation case brought by former Singaporean Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew against the Singapore Democratic Party. Under a provision of the Singaporean Penal Code, insulting a public servant conducting a judicial proceeding is punishable by up to one year in prison, a $5,000 fine or both. After Nair entered his plea, the trial was adjourned until later this week.

Nair faces another trial on a charge of insulting a second judge. He is also appealing his conviction last week on charges of disorderly conduct and using abusive words toward police officers.

In July, a report by the International Bar Association's Human Rights Institute (IBAHRI) concluded that Singapore lacks an independent judiciary and fails to meet international standards of human rights by heavily regulating international and domestic press and enforcing extreme defamation laws.

The Committee to Protect Journalists condemns a two-month ban summarily handed to a Guinean independent newspaper last week over an editorial that raised critical questions about the health of President Lansana Conté’s second wife.

The state-run National Communications Council decided on the ban, which is the third suspension of a newspaper in Guinea this yea.

The ban on La Croisade should be lifted immediately, said CPJ’s Africa Program Coordinator, Tom Rhodes: The media in Guinea has a right to report on political and public figures.

The ruling was linked to an editorial that discussed widely circulated rumors about whether the president’s wife, Kadiatou Seth Conté, was mentally ill and had been in France for medical care.

The state-run National Communications Council, in a ruling issued on May 19, accused La Croisade, a weekly based in the capital, Conakry, of harming the honor and esteem of physical and moral persons and violating privacy.

Sayed Pervez Kambaksh believes his long nightmare is almost over.

The 24-year-old student, sentenced to death in Afganistan for downloading internet reports on women's rights, is allowing himself to be hopeful for the first time since he was condemned.

The Independent has learnt, however, that the Afghan President, Hamid Karzai, has privately assured Kambaksh's campaign team that he will be freed. Senior government figures have also indicated that they believe his sentence, by a court in Mazar-e-Sharif, was based on a mistaken interpretation of the country's constitutional law.

Kambaksh has already discreetly been issued with a passport which will enable him to start a new life abroad if and when he is freed.

A petition by readers of The Independent to secure justice for him has attracted more than 100,000 signatures. Des Browne, the Defence Secretary, said on a visit to Afghanistan yesterday that he would be raising the matter with Karzai.

Kambaksh said from his cell yesterday that he was aware that the Afghan President may save his life. This is very, very important for me. It was a court which said I must die without even hearing my side of the story. There are many judges who are very conservative and say I have insulted Islam without really considering the evidence.

They themselves are also afraid of extremists and this could influence their decision. That worries me. But I am very grateful to the international media, especially The Independent, for taking an interest in my case. I think that makes it difficult for them to just get rid of me.

According to Samay Hamed, the co-ordinator of Kambaksh's campaign team, President Karzai first agreed to pardon the student in March this year. I ... have been told repeatedly by government ministers that [they] want the matter resolved quickly.

Nader Gohar has been in the business of broadcasting for the past 25 years, but he is now standing trial for importing and owning television equipment and transmitting broadcasts without permission.

At least that is the official line.

In reality, Gohar is on trial for broadcasting the Mahalla al Kobra protests on April 6, including footage of protesters tearing down and defacing a large poster of Hosni Mubarak, the Egyptian president.

The following day, the head of the board of the Radio and Television Union filed a complaint with Egypt’s prosecutor general, alleging that Gohar’s Cairo News Company (CNC) – which provides satellite broadcast services and equipment to such television networks as Al Jazeera, BBC and CNN – had been operating without the required permits.

On April 17, 35 plainclothes police officers raided CNC’s Cairo offices, confiscating its five sets of satellite transmission equipment, effectively shutting it down.

The date of the strike, April 6, was originally set by factory workers in Mahalla al Kobra, 120km north of Cairo, who were protesting against high food prices, low wages and widespread poverty.

Clashes erupted and continued until the following day and police fired tear gas and rubber bullets at protesters, killing at least two and wounding about 100. More than 300 people were arrested. Footage of the violence sent tremors through Egyptian society.

Chinese police have detained a political dissident because of remarks he made about the government's handling of the Sichuan earthquake, according to his family and supporters.

Guo Quan, the founder of the China Democracy party, was seized outside his home by seven or eight police officers four days ago. They searched his house and confiscated his computer.

The following day, police officers told his wife Li Jing. that her husband was being detained for at least 10 days because of false information he posted online.

It was unclear which comments upset the authorities. Guo has written a string of critical articles on the communist one-party political system. He was stripped of his professorial post at Nanjing university last year.

In the past week, he is said to have raised questions about the emergency services' response to the quake and the safety of nuclear facilities in Sichuan. Fellow members of his small party believe his detention is connected to last week's disaster.

Guo Quan is a co-founder of China’s Netizen Party and litigant in a recent lawsuit against Yahoo!

Reporters Without Borders calls on the Egyptian authorities to free Kareem El-Beheiri, a blogger who was arrested on 6 April in the industrial town of Mahalla (100 km north of Cairo) while covering a strike in the textile plant where he worked. He has been held in Borg El Arab prison since April.

We are worried about Beheiri’s health as he is being mistreated and has gone on hunger strike, the press freedom organisation said. The prison’s management refuses to move him to the hospital so that he can receive appropriate treatment. We call on the authorities to release him while they decide exactly what charges they are going to bring against him.

Beheiri and two other activists who were arrested the same day, Tareq Amin and Kamal el-Fayyoumy, described their mistreatment in a joint letter on 18 May to Zakareya Abdel Aziz, the head of the Cairo Judges Club. We were tortured at state security headquarters in Mahalla on 6, 7 and 8 April, the letter said: Policemen administered electric shocks to Kareem and insulted and beat Tareq Amin and Kamal El-Fayyoumy.

Since his arrest, Beheiri has been fired from his job on the grounds of absenteeism, although his employers have received documents confirming that he is being detained. The authorities accuse him of encouraging the strike on his blog, in which he referred to the actions being organised by Egyptian workers in protest against their poor living standards.

In his last blog entry, Beheiri wrote: It is now 7 a.m. on 6 April, and I am going to Mahalla to cover the factory strike. Pray for me and I hope that everyone will succeed in demonstrating the flaws in the Egyptian regime. Kareem El-Beheiri, for a free country, that of Egyptian revolutionaries.

The 6 April strike in protest against increases in the prices of basic staples was observed by several thousand people in Cairo and Mahalla. A “6 April” group on the social-networking website Facebook urging Egyptians to protest by all possible means had attracted 64,000 members by the eve of the protest.

Esraa Abdel Fattah Ahmed was detained for more than two weeks for being a member of this group. Its organiser, 27-year-old engineer Ahmed Maher, was beaten by the Mahalla police for 12 hours to get him to give the password to the Facebook group and the real names of its members. Facebook cancelled his account because it thought all the messages he was sending to members of the “6 April” group were spam.

This strike organised on the Internet was unprecedented for the authorities, who did not know who to blame it on, Reporters Without Borders said: We condemn the fact that people have been detained for several weeks just for using their right to free expression.

Update: Police Thugs

23rd May 2008

Ahmed after police interview

Egyptian authorities should immediately investigate and prosecute those security officials responsible for beating Ahmed Maher Ibrahim, Human Rights Watch said. Maher used the social-networking site Facebook to support calls for a general strike on May 4, 2008.

Maher told Human Rights Watch that officers from the Interior Ministry’s State Security Investigations (SSI) department apprehended him on a street in the suburb of New Cairo on May 7, blindfolded him and took him to a police station where they stripped him naked, and beat him intermittently for 12 hours before releasing him without charge.

This is the work of thugs, pure and simple, said Joe Stork, Middle East deputy director at Human Rights Watch: The government must show that those responsible for upholding the law are also subject to the law.

Update: Released

3rd June 2008

Egyptian blogger Kareem El Beheiry has been released yesterday from prison.

Pervez Kambaksh, the Afghan student sentenced to death after being accused of downloading internet reports on women's rights, yesterday pleaded innocent to charges of blasphemy. He told an appeal court in Kabul that he had been tortured into confessing.

Kambaksh, 24, vehemently denied that he had been responsible for producing anti-Islamic literature. He insisted the prosecution had been motivated by personal malice of two members of staff and their student supporters at the university in Balkh, where he was studying journalism.

He was convicted in proceedings behind closed doors in a trial which he said had lasted just four minutes and where he had been denied legal representation.

Yesterday, in the first public hearing of the case, the prosecution claimed that Kambaksh had disrupted classes at the university by asking questions about women's rights under Islam. It also said he distributed an article on the subject after writing an additional three paragraphs including the phrase This is the real face of Islam ... The prophet Mohamad wrote verses of the holy Koran just for his own benefit.

In a highly emotional statement, Kambaksh said: I'm Muslim and I would never let myself write such an article. These accusations are nonsense, [they] come from two professors and other students because of private hostilities against me. I was tortured by the intelligence service in Balkh province and they made me confess that I wrote three paragraphs in this article.

Kambaksh represented himself because his family are having difficulties finding a lawyer to represent him after threats by fundamentalist groups that anyone taking on the job would be killed.

The head of the panel of three judges at Kabul, Abdul Salaam Qazizada, adjourned the trial until next Sunday to allow Kambaksh further attempts to find a lawyer. As of last night they had not succeeded.

Kambaksh's case has been raised with President Hamid Karzai by Foreign Secretary David Miliband and the US secretary of state Condoleezza Rice.

On Sunday 11th May 2008 the State Security Court in Damascus stated its verdict on the Syrian blogger Tariq Baiasi who was held in detention since July 2007. Tariq was detained for leaving a comment on websites disfavored by the Syrian government. Free Tariq Campaign condemned the State’s verdict and asks for freedom to the Syrian blogger:

The State Security Court in Damascus has sentenced Tariq to three years after lessening it from six years to three years (originally, Tariq received three years for each of the following charges):

• Dwindling the national feeling
• Weakening the national ethos.

The militarily security arrested Tariq on 7-7-2007 for leaving a comment on websites considered “suspicious” by the Syrian government.

Syrian bloggers continue to call for freedom to fellow blogger Tariq Baiassi.

Qi Chonghuai, a journalist in China’s Shandong province who had written critically about local officials, has been sentenced to four years in prison for fraud and extortion in a trial that lasted 12 hours, according to his wife and lawyers.

Access to the trial was limited, and reporters were not allowed to attend. According to Qi’s wife, Jiao Xia, and his defense lawyers, Li Xiongbing and Li Chunfu. Qi denied the charges.

Qi said two police officers hit his head against the floor during a break in the trial, Li told CPJ by phone from Tengzhou after emerging from court. Qi reported being beaten while in prison in August 2007.

We condemn Qi Chonghuai’s sentence and the brutal treatment he has received throughout his detention, said CPJ Asia Program Coordinator Bob Dietz. This case, coming less than three months before the Olympics, illustrates the government’s failure to institute the freedom of the press promised when the Games were awarded to China in 2001.

Qi and a friend, Ma Shiping, wrote a June 8, 2007, article accusing a low-level Tengzhou official of beating a local woman for arriving late to work. The article was published on the Web site of the U.S.-based Falun Gong-affiliated Epoch Times, according to a written report provided to CPJ by Li. Qi and Ma also posted photographs of a luxurious Tengzhou government building on the anti-corruption Web forum of the government-run Xinhua News Agency on June 14. Officials questioned Qi about the article and the photographs before his arrest on June 25, according to Li.

The major Egyptian government-owned ISP has blocked the website of a leading opposition movement, a rights group said, in the latest crackdown on the country's cyber dissidents.

The website for the Egyptian Movement for Change - Kefaya has been blocked in Egypt (for) users who have access to the Internet through TE-Data ... since May 4, the Arab Network for Human Rights Information (ANHRI) said in a statement.

TE-Data, a branch of Telecom Egypt and the largest Internet service provider (ISP) in Egypt, is controlled by the Egyptian government.

A dissident Chinese writer in police custody faces trial for inciting subversion as part of an apparent government crackdown on dissents ahead of the Beijing Olympics.

Zhou Yuanzhi, a former tax official, and his wife were taken away by the National Security Bureau of Zhongxiang city.

Zhou is a freelance writer who has published two books in Hong Kong and more than 500 articles under several pen names in overseas Chinese-language magazines and Web sites. Many of his articles have been critiques on social issues and official corruption.

He lost his job in Zhongxiang city's taxation bureau in 1992 and was stripped of his Communist Party membership for contributing an article to Voice of America in defiance of a ban.

The decision by Guyana's President Bharrat Jagdeo to impose a four-month ban on a private television station has not gone down well with United Nations Special Rapporteur on the promotion and protection of the right to freedom of opinion and expression, Ambeyi Ligabo.

Ligabo cited the move as an example of tactics used by governments to restrict the independence of the press whilst seemingly allowing States to maintain a façade of respect to democratic principles such as freedom of expression.

In Guyana CNS Channel 6 was suspended for four months for 'infringing the terms of its license' after an interviewee, speaking during a live broadcast, called for attacks against the President.

Take note of what’s been happening in Malaysia these past few days since popular blogger and political commentator Raja Petra Kamarudin was imprisoned on Tuesday after a trial which saw him charged with sedition for having written a blog post.

If the Malaysian government was truly worried about bloggers effecting social unrest, now they have it. Remember, this is a country where any politician worth their mutton has a blog, and even the old goats now blog too.

Ex-Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad has a highly-read blog, as does PM hopeful Anwar Ibrahim.

They set up their blogs, and they try to close down our blogs, said Raja

Raja is one of the sharpest voices both online and off in Malaysia.

Bahrain has announced a new draft press law, long demanded by journalists and rights groups, which scraps jail terms for most offences but leaves courts to rule on two key areas.

The draft law guarantees freedom of expression as long as religion is not insulted or national unity threatened. The information minister, asked whether offenders could be jailed, said judges would decide.

This is left to the judiciary and is not the affair of the information ministry, Minister Jehad Bukamal (pictured) said at a news conference.

No journalist has been imprisoned in Bahrain since 1999, the rights group Reporters Without Borders said in a March report on the country, which was placed 118 out of 169 in its 2007 press freedom index, behind Qatar, Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates.

Kuwait is the only other Gulf Arab state that has decriminalised press offences, the organisation said.

We're happy that Bahrain has decriminalised press offences, but journalists can still be prosecuted under the penal code, for insulting the king or religion for example, Reporters Without Borders' Middle East chief Hajar Smouni said.

It is not clear how the draft law will affect bloggers, and a Bahraini official said blogging would be dealt with in later legislation.

It was not clear when the new draft press law would be presented to parliament for approval. Bahraini journalists said Islamist lawmakers, who have dominated parliament since 2006 polls, might object to the law, particularly in relation to insulting Islam. But Bahraini officials said they were confident the law would be passed soon because King Hamad bin Isa al-Khalifa has backed press law reform.

Police in the Ethiopian capital, Addis Ababa, have detained a journalist and three support staffers of a private entertainment magazine since May 2.

Local journalists say the detentions are related to a cover story about the high-profile trial of Ethiopia’s most popular pop singer, Tewodros Kassahun.

Deputy Editor and owner Alemayehu Mahtemework and the three media workers from the monthly Enku remained in police custody today without charges. Local journalists also reported that Editor-in-Chief Fekadu Mahtemework went into hiding after being summoned for questioning.

Mahtemework and the others were picked up early Friday evening as they carried 10,000 copies of the current edition from the printer to their offices. The police impounded all the copies of the paper, allegedly after receiving a tip from an informant at the printer that the cover story could lead to “incitement,”. The story focused on the trial of jailed pop music icon and government critic Kassahun, better known as Teddy Afro, and included interviews with his lawyer and fans.

The seizure of Enku and the arrests of its staffers is a continuation of the Ethiopian government’s ongoing efforts to stifle the private press from freely reporting on important public issues, said CPJ’s executive director Joel Simon: We call on the Ethiopian authorities to abandon these crude tactics of intimidation and release our colleagues immediately. We also condemn this flagrant act of censorship and ask that the authorities return the confiscated copies of the magazine.

Update: Released

Based on article from cpj.org, 5th August 2008

Ethiopian journalists tell us that police in Addis Ababa have finally released 10,000 copies of Enku magazine that were impounded on May 2 because of a cover story about the jailed pop music icon and government critic Teddy Afro. The May edition is expected to finally go on sale on Saturday. CPJ had protested the seizure with Ethiopian officials.

We also denounced the arrests of Enku's deputy editor and owner, Alemayehu Mahtemework, and three staffers, who were accused of "inciting the public" against the government because of the magazine's interviews with the singer's supporters. Mahtemework and his colleagues were released without charge after five days in custody.

An annual survey of media freedom has reported a mixed picture in East Asia - with some losses and some gains.

The US-based Freedom House organisation says China tightened some restrictions in 2007, but also tolerated more investigative journalism into cases of official corruption and enforced child labour. Gains were offset by an elaborate web of regulations and laws, which allowed the tightening of media control and internet restrictions in China.

The report noted gains last year in Thailand and Malaysia, but said Vietnam and Laos continue to fare poorly.

It ranked North Korea as the world's most restricted media environment. Freedom House said the Burmese media environment remained among the most tightly restricted in the world during 2007, with conditions worsening in August and September due to the crackdown on pro-democracy demonstrations. As many as 15 journalists were detained during the unrest.

The report said Vietnam had reversed some of the gains in press freedom that had been made in 2006, with a crackdown on dissident writers. For every step forward in press freedom last year, there were two steps back. It said the country's fledgling community of online pro-democracy writers was targeted by the government - with six cyber-dissidents imprisoned within one week in May.

Freedom House says press freedom has declined in the world overall. Finland and Iceland are described as the world's freest media environments.

Mikhail Zlatkovsky has been lampooning Russian leaders since the days of perestroika. But he has discovered that satire permitted by Gorbachev and Yeltsin is dangerous under Putin.

When Yeltsin named Vladimir Putin as acting president on New Year's Eve 1999, Zlatkovsky drew the ailing Yeltsin dredging a mermaid-tailed Putin out of the sea and putting a crown on his head. Putin became a regular feature of Zlatkovsky's cartoons. But the new President was officially inaugurated on 7 May 2000, and the next day, Zlatkovsky's editor at Literaturnaya Gazeta, where he then worked, came into the newsroom, fresh from a Kremlin reception.

He said to me, 'Misha, we're not going to draw Putin any more,' recalls Zlatkovsky: The young lad is very sensitive. From that day onwards, Zlatkovsky has not had another cartoon of Putin published. Nowadays, the only cartoons of the Russian leader to appear in the Russian press are those that depict him in a positive, or even heroic light.

As Putin's rule went on, says Zlatkovsky, the number of taboo subjects increased – ministers, Kremlin aides, Chechnya and top military brass all became off limits. Recently a cartoon depicting Alexy II, the Patriarch of the Russian Orthodox Church, propmpted a phone call from the patriarchate and a strong request never to draw him again.

There's no central censor these days, says Zlatkovsky: Instead, we have the censorship of the fire safety inspectorate; or the censorship of the tax police. Satirise the ruling class today, and tomorrow the newspaper offices will be paid a surprise visit by fire inspectors who will find a bureaucratic regulation that the office does not meet, and close it. Or there will be a call from the printworks stating that the price of paper has inexplicably risen tenfold. Many cartoonists have given up, finding other work, and newspaper editors prefer to err on the side of caution and not publish cartoons at all.

Bending over backwards to Putin's wishes

Russia's lower house of parliament voted yesterday to widen the definition of slander and libel and give regulators the authority to shut down media outlets found guilty of publishing such material.

The legislation, passed by the State Duma 339-1, is the latest attempt by the government to squeeze the country's increasingly embattled news media.

The bill allows authorities to suspend and close down media outlets for libel and slander — punishment that is identical for news media found to be promoting terrorism, extremism and racial hatred.

It also expands the definition for slander and libel to dissemination of deliberately false information damaging individual honor and dignity.

The legislation will be considered in two more readings, before heading to the upper house of parliament, where approval is likely, and then to Putin for signing.

The bill's passage comes just days after a scandal involving a tabloid newspaper that had reported that President Vladimir Putin had divorced his wife and planned to marry a champion gymnast.

Malaysia's government lifted the ban on a newspaper catering to ethnic minority Indians, but denied caving in to criticism that it was stifling press freedom.

The Home Ministry told the Tamil-language Makkal Osai, or People's Voice, last week that its operating license had not been renewed. Authorities subsequently said the newspaper flouted media guidelines on how racial issues should be reported.

The newspaper's general manager, S.M. Periasamy, said he received a letter from the ministry Thursday informing him that the ban had been dropped. No reasons or conditions were given, and the newspaper expects to resume publication Saturday, Periasamy said.

Home Minister Syed Hamid Albar confirmed he approved a new annual permit for Makkal Osai, saying its editors have assured the government that: they will abide by the guidelines and contribute to our nation-building efforts.

He denied that the government had backtracked because of fierce criticism by opposition leaders and media activists. Syed Hamid had said last week he was considering doing away with the annual licensing and switching to licenses that only need to be issued once, saying the country needs press freedom in order for us to have a check and balance in government.

A prominent democracy activist whose blog featured reports on demonstrations against the relay of the Beijing Olympic torch was arrested by Vietnamese police.

Police arrested Nguyen Van Hai, who blogs under the name Dieu Cay, on charges of tax evasion.

Hai is a member of a group of internet bloggers known as the Union of Independent Journalists. Other members of the group have called for protests along the torch's route when it is carried through Ho Chi Minh City.

On his blog, Hai had featured articles on protests against the torch in other cities around the world, and others critical of China's policies in Tibet and the Spratlys and opposing the torch's relay through Vietnam.

A detailed schedule for the relay in Ho Chi Minh City wa