Asia
2010
In China, more calls for media freedom
Today, members of China’s Communist Party Central Committee met in Beijing to open a three-day discussion on the country’s next five-year development plan. And while they’re unlikely to openly debate a recent letter by 23 senior Party members, which called for sweeping reforms of China’s media censorship policies, it will certainly be in the air.
Indonesian Playboy editor held in high-security prison
Erwin Arnada turned himself in to authorities at Cipinang prison in East Jakarta on October 9 to start serving a two-year sentence for public indecency. His conviction stemmed from pictures he published in a 2006 issue of the now-defunct Indonesian edition of Playboy magazine. On September 30, CPJ called on President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono and…
Communist Party elders urge end to China’s censorship
Twenty-three senior Communist Party members have published a letter calling for sweeping reforms of China’s media censorship policies. “Our core demand is that the system of censorship be dismantled in favor of a system of legal responsibility,” the letter said, according to an English translation by Hong Kong University’s China Media Project. Widely distributed by e-mail and posted…
As with Norgrove, a need to probe Munadi death
This morning, Prime Minister David Cameron announced that British aid worker Linda Norgrove, who died in a rescue attempt after she was taken hostage in Afghanistan, may have been killed by a U.S. grenade rather than by her Taliban captors, as originally reported.
China seeks to block news of Liu’s Nobel
New York, October 8, 2010–The Committee to Protect Journalists calls on the Chinese government to end its pointless attempts to block the news by blacking out domestic and foreign media coverage of the Norwegian Nobel Committee’s announcement awarding jailed human rights activist Liu Xiaobo the 2010 Nobel Peace Prize. According to foreign news agencies’ reports from…
The high price of writing about the Japanese mafia
“In life, we only encounter the injustices we were meant to correct.” -Igari Toshiro, ex-prosecutor, leading lawyer in the anti-organized crime movement in Japan (1949-2010) Igari Toshiro was my lawyer, my mentor, and my friend. In the sixteen years I’ve been covering organized crime in Japan, I’ve never met anyone more courageous or inspiring–or anyone…
Using new Internet filters, Afghanistan blocks news site
Until recently, Afghanistan’s Internet has been notably free of government censorship. That stems largely from the limited impact and visibility of the Net domestically: The Taliban banned the Internet during its rule, and despite a recent boom in use, the nation has only a million users out of a population of about 29 million. But…
For Pakistani journalists, flood coverage poses challenges
As most of the nation lay paralyzed and submerged in flood water, Pakistani journalists traveled in four-wheel drives and rickety boats to bring tidings from some of the hardest hit areas of the country. The Pakistani Federal Union of Journalists (PFUJ) compiled a list of journalists directly affected by the flood, many of whom had…
Internet blotter
The International Telecommunications Union starts its plenipotentiary meeting this week. Some worry that some nations will use their position at the ITU to attempt to grab more control over how the Internet works. RSF covers the Burmese DDOS attacks. I’ve heard some really fascinating detective work on the real origins of these attacks – hope…