Blogger

New York, September 11, 2008–The Committee to Protect Journalists strongly condemns a Vietnamese court decision on Wednesday to imprison blogger Nguyen Van Hai, better known by his penname Dieu Cay, on charges of tax evasion. The court in Ho Chi Minh City, in southern Vietnam, convicted Hai, 55, in a closed-door trial, sentencing him to…

Bloggers across the Web are showing their solidarity with Mohamed Erraji, a Moroccan blogger who was sentenced to two years in prison last week for “failing to show respect for the king.” A Moroccan court convicted Erraji, 29, a contributor to HesPress, a Moroccan daily news ‎Web site, on Monday in a closed, 10-minute trial.…

EDITOR’S NOTE: The original version of this alert has been modified to correct the age of the blogger. New York, September 10, 2008–The Committee to Protect Journalists condemns a Moroccan court’s decision to jail and fine blogger and journalist Mohamed Erraji for “failing to respect the king.” The court in Agadir, in southwest Morocco, convicted Erraji…

It sounds like the plot of a B movie. The charred corpse of a missing female U.S. Marine and her fetus are found buried beneath a fire pit in the backyard of a male U.S. Marine whom she had previously accused of rape. The Marine suspect flees North Carolina for south of the border where…

Bob Dietz called attention to the Chinese propaganda department’s recent 21-point press directive, first reported by the South China Morning Post in Hong Kong. The whole thing in English and Chinese is posted today at Berkeley’s China Digital Times. Among the orders given to the domestic media during the Olympic Games is that they are not to report on…

Hong Kong, August 22, 2008—Chinese police should halt ongoing harassment of photographers seeking to document pro-Tibet protests in Beijing, the Committee to Protect Journalists said today in the wake of reports that two video bloggers have been detained and two Associated Press journalists obstructed. Video bloggers Brian Conley and Jeff Rae were detained early Tuesday…

The self-described anarchist-activist seemed like an unlikely press freedom martyr. But a video blogger named Josh Wolf ended up serving more time in jail for defying a court order than any other journalist in U.S. history. Wolf, then 24, was held for 226 days at a federal penitentiary in Dublin, Calif., for refusing to testify…

New York, August 19, 2008—The Committee to Protect Journalists strongly condemns the recent harassment of popular bloggers Raja Petra Kamarudin and Abdul Rashid Bakar. On August 15, Raja Petra, editor of the Malaysia Today news Web site, was ordered by a Malaysian Court to reveal the sources for three of his posted articles, which accused…

Even with the world enthralled in the drama of the Olympic Games, the more basic struggles in the rest of China continue to quietly unfold. Nanfang Dushi Bao (Southern Metropolis Daily) today published a long article with little apparent connection to the Olympics, a rarity these days. It is actually re-posted from Zhejiang Daily, and tells the story of a farming…

Global Voices Online noticed yesterday when guerrilla blogger Zola (Zhou Shuguang) began tweeting his own detention. His BlackBerry let the world know that local officials had intercepted him in the town of Fengmuqiao in Hunan province, and he posted updates as they forced him into a car to drive him home. If he leaves his…