Blogger Report

A major leap forward for freedom of expression in Vietnam has been the rise of blogs. But this development has led to growing conflicts between bloggers, government authorities, and, potentially, multinational Internet service companies.  

CPJ’s ranking is helpful in that it makes the world pay attention to countries that censor the Internet. I do not know much about other countries, but I know about China. I believe that the outside world (as well as people within China) cannot actually know how many people are jailed because of Internet speech.…

Blogging in Burma is nearly as dangerous as protesting on the streets against the country’s military-run government. So it will come as no surprise to those who closely monitor Burma’s heavily restricted media and censored Internet that CPJ has ranked the country as the worst place in the world to be a blogger. 

Why write a blog? My reasons might not be convincing, but to me, they are enough. The most important paper in my country is Granma, the official organ of the Communist Party in Cuba. You open it, you read it, and you don’t see anything. Nothing about the day that we are living in the…

The specter of government opposition to blogging, journalism, and free expression in general in Tunisia is so intense that the mere appearance of a specific name online is enough to push the government to block the Web site where it appears, even if that site is not critical of the government. 

Even though Turkmen President Gurbanguly Berdymuhammedov announced two years ago the necessity of universal Internet access, the Web is more than restricted in the country. This is connected to cruel official censorship, the serious limitation of the availability and speed of Internet connections in cities, and its total absence in villages. I haven’t even mentioned…