Vietnam cracks down on the net

The Vietnamese authorities are taking a leaf out of China;s books according to an article in the Washington Post.

As the continued economic growth in the country has led to increased internet use,

Vietnam's government has issued several decrees in recent months to curtail blogging

reports Tim Johnson

The campaign started in August, when the government published an edict giving police broad authority to move against online critics, including those who oppose "the State of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam" and undermine national security and social order.
The law also bans "obscenity and debauchery . . . and destroying national fine customs and traditions," according to the official gazette published -- online -- by the Ministry of Information and Communications.

Indy claims Government is upping the D notices

This morning's Independent in a front page exclusive claims that the governemnt has plans to prevent the media reporting on matters of national security.

The paper says that

The Intelligence and Security Committee, the parliamentary watchdog of the intelligence and security agencies which has a cross-party membership from both Houses, wants to press ministers to introduce legislation that would prevent news outlets from reporting stories deemed by the Government to be against the interests of national security.

The case that seems to have brought this about was the 2007 plot by Islamists to kidnap a Britis soldier

The then director general of MI5, Dame Eliza Manningham-Buller, was among those who complained to the ISC. "We were very angry, but it is not clear who we should be angry with, that most of the story of the arrests in Op Gamble were in the media very, very fast ... So the case was potentially jeopardised by the exposure of what the story was. My officers and the police were jeopardised by them being on operations when the story broke. The strategy of the police for interrogating those arrested was blown out of the water, and my staff felt pretty depressed ... that this has happened."

Not surprisingly the Indy says that censorship is not the answer.In its leading article the paper says

Not for the first time, a sledgehammer seems to be being used to crack a relatively small nut. If ministers believe police leaks are a problem, then better police discipline is the answer, not wholesale censorship of the media

On the media in Indonesia

Having travelled around Indonesia about 7 years ago,I was quite interested to read Lawrence Pintak's article in Arab Society and Media looking at the current state of the media.

He describes a change since he was last there in the dying days of the Suharto era where the media was still under strict control.Today

there was an explosion of new independent media outlets and a journalistic free-for-all that reflected the no-holds-barred politics that replaced one-party rule. While there are today more articles in the Criminal Code that constrain journalists than in the Suharto years, and the country has yet to remove the criminal libel provisions that stifle press freedom, the media largely reports what it wants (and, in the case of the tabloid press, what it wants to make up).

Bloggers weary of Kuwait's new internet laws

There is a new internet law on the way in Kuwait and there are concerns that it will have an influence on the blogging community.

According to the Kuwait Times

the draft law contains 37 different categories of offense, including slandering religions, the Kuwaiti constitution or the person of the Amir, with each offense incurring different penalties such as fines or imprisonment.

The countries bloggers see the move as a way of inhibiting freedom of expressio and a number have written of their concerns,one writes

An average reader of the new proposals will realise that the new draft covers what is referred to as Internet crimes in general but has left in a lot of ambiguous issues, which were left floating and at the disposal of those with judicial authority

Bad news for Iranian bloggers

Futher evidence of the Iranian government's intolerance of media freedoms.

Earlier this week the government debated a bill that could techinically mean that bloggers in the country could face the death penalty.

MPs on Wednesday voted to discuss as a priority the draft bill which seeks to "toughen punishment for harming mental security in society," the ISNA news agency said.
The text lists a wide range of crimes such rape and armed robbery for which the death penalty is already applicable. The crime of apostasy (the act of leaving a religion, in this case Islam) is also already punishable by death.
However, the draft bill also includes "establishing weblogs and sites promoting corruption, prostitution and apostasy", which is a new addition to crimes punishable by death.

(Khaleeji Times)

Quite what the phrase 2harming mental security in society" means is unclear but surely this is another step towards opppression

Hamid Tehrani explains that

About a year and a half ago, the Iranian government demanded that bloggers should register and provide their names and addresses on a site called Samandehi. Many people believed such a process would facilitate legal action against them.
Bloggers resisted and many published an “I do not register my blog/site” banner on their blogs. The Government then realised it cannot have real control of the situation, or force bloggers to register.

Another bad year for Journalism

Reporters without frontiers rounds up 2007 with the news that 86 journalists lost their lives around the world.

These are the statistics

In 2007:
86 journalists and 20 media assistants were killed
887 arrested
1,511 physically attacked or threatened
67 journalists kidnapped
528 media outlets censored

Online:
37 bloggers were arrested
21 physically attacked
2,676 websites shut down or suspended

47 of those killed were in Iraq,6 in Somalia and six in Pakistan.

On top of that at least 2 journalists a day were arrested,mostly in Pakistan,Cuba and Iran.In cyberspace over 2600 sites were shut down,the main culprits,China.Burma and Syria.

Media freedom in Europe

The association of European journalists has just published a survey of media freedom across Europe

According to their site

The Survey covers 20 countries in eastern and western Europe and highlights evidence
that media freedom in Europe is threatened by restrictive laws, hidden political and
commercial pressures, threats of jail, intimidation and in some cases even murder.
The findings are intended to encourage and assist future campaigns for media freedom
and independence.

Its maim finding are that

Media freedom and independence in Europe are not assured, and in some of the countries surveyed they are growing weaker. They must be won in law and in practice.

The problems of direct political interference in media affairs and contents are more acute in the “new democracies” of Central and Eastern Europe; but Western European countries can no longer be confident that they offer a more secure model of media freedom. New political and economic pressures in many of the older EU states mean that media freedom and independence there, too, are insecure.

You can download the whole report for free and there is a country by country section and nothing much to worry about in the Uk

Media freedom appears lively and strong in Britain three years after a notable setback in 2004, when the chairman and director-general of the BBC as well as a reporter were forced to resign after a confrontation over the reporting of flaws in a government dossier about supposed Weapons of Mass Destruction in Iraq and the death of a weapons expert, Dr David Kelly.