U-Censorship

Human Rights Watch, November 30, 2003

Liu Di, a twenty-two year-old psychology major at Beijing Normal University, frequently posted comments on Chinese Internet chatrooms, under the pen name “stainless-steel mouse.” In 2001, she started her own a chatroom, “A Life Like Fire,” in 2001 after police closed down one she preferred. Liu published several articles on the Xici on-line bulletin board that criticized government restrictions on the Internet. One of her articles expressed sympathy for Huang Qi, a webmaster jailed in June 2000 the on-line bulletin board he ran published articles relating to several taboo topics, including the 1989 Tiananmen Square democracy demonstrations.

On November 7, 2002, officers of the State Security Protection Bureau removed her from her campus. Five months later she has yet to surface. Her family does not know where she is; she has had no access to legal counsel. Public Security Bureau officials later searched the family home, removing her computer, notebooks, and floppy disks. The Beijing branch of China’s State Security Bureau has notified Ms. Liu’s family that she is being held on charges of “being detrimental to state security.”

According to friends and university officials, the police had warned her several times to stop posting articles critical of the government and in defense of other jailed Internet users. In some of her web essays, Ms. Liu urged readers to “ignore government propaganda and live freely,” and to spread “reactionary” ideas via the Internet.” “Even though the Chinese Communist Party has power over us, but if we can’t feel it, pretend and live as if it doesn’t exist,” she wrote.

Reporters Without Borders 2005 report

Reporters Without Borders today deplored Syria’s blocking of two Kurdish-language news websites - www.amude.com and www.qamislo.com - which had carried news, pictures and video clips of demonstrations by the country’s Kurdish minority.


It said it was "disgusted by the regime’s authoritarian attitude and flagrant contempt for freedom of expression" by censoring websites and noted that a journalism student, arrested last July for posting photos on amude.com, was still in prison. "The authorities have now gone a step further," it said.

The two websites, run from Germany and blocked for Syrian Internet users in mid-March, are a major source of information for Kurds abroad and for foreign media, which regularly use their photos and videos.

Syrian users now get an "access denied" message when they try to go to the sites. Amude.com manager Siruan Hadsch-Hossein (whose pseudonym is Sirwan Heci Berko) said the authorities filter websites and block their domain name, so the material was initially still available at another address, www.amude.net, which had now been blocked.

The state-run Syrian Telecommunications Establishment (STE) filters hundreds of websites it deems pornographic, pro-Israeli or critical of the regime. Syria has only two Internet service providers (ISPs), both government-controlled - one operated by the post office and the other by the Syrian Computer Society. Much evidence suggests that e-mail, like phone conversations, are extensively monitored by the authorities.

Two Internet users are in prison for posting allegedly "offensive" material online.

One is Kurdish journalism student Massud Hamid, 29, who was arrested on 24 July last year while sitting an exam at Damascus University. He has since been held in secret at Adra prison, near Damascus, and reportedly ill-treated. He was picked up a month after photos were posted on amude.com of a peaceful Kurdish demonstration in Damascus.

The other cyber-dissident in jail is Abdel Rahman Shaguri, arrested on 23 February last year after e-mailing Levant News, the newsletter of the banned website www.thisissyria.net. He too is being held in secret, at Saidnaya prison, near Damascus, pending trial by the state security court.

By Reporters without Borders Published: August 27, 2006

Blogger Abed Tavancheh released on bail

Reporters Without Borders welcomes the release on bail, on 11 July 2006, of blogger Abed Tavancheh. Bail was set at 50 millions tomans (about 50,000 euros). He is due to go on trial shortly, but the date of the hearing has yet to be fixed. The blogger was arrested on 26 May at Teheran University where he is a student, during demonstrations which led to clashes between young democrats and the Basij militia - students who are controlled by the authorities.

06.06.2006

Arrest confirmed of blogger Abed Tavancheh, missing since 26 May

Blogger Abed Tavancheh, from whom nothing had been heard since 26 May, finally got in touch with his family on 6 June to tell them he is being held at Evin prison in Teheran. He said that he was well but gave them no further information. The newspaper Sobeh Sadegh, the official organ of the Revolutionary Guards, accused Tavancheh and his friends of the “Marxist branch” of the Unity Consolidation Bureau (the unofficial students’ union) of being behind rioting which has shaken Amirkabir University in Teheran for several weeks. In Iran, to be a Marxist means to question the existence of God, which is in the eyes of the law an apostasy punishable by the death penalty.

31.05.2006

Student blogger missing, may have been arrested

Reporters Without Borders today said it was “very worried” about Abed Tavancheh, a blogger and student at Tehran’s Amirkabir polytechnic university, who has been missing since 26 May and may well have been arrested after posting photos and reports about the demonstrations taking place at his university for the past few weeks.

“Tavancheh is a courageous blogger who may well have fallen prey to the government’s crackdown on the student pro-democracy movement,” the press freedom organisation said. “His work nonetheless shows that Iranian civil society is dynamic and is resisting government censorship and authoritarianism.”

Tavancheh has been out of contact with his family and friends since 26 May and cannot be reached on his mobile phone. He had participated in the rioting between pro-democracy youths and the government-controlled Basij student militias that recently broke out on his campus.

Many photos of these incidents have been posted on his blog, called “In the name of man, justice and truth”. His last message, posted the day he went missing, includes the text of a letter by Nasser Zarafshan, a famous lawyer - now in prison - who acted for the families of intellectuals and journalists who were murdered during a crackdown in 1998.

Two other bloggers Arash Sigarshi and Mojtaba Saminejad, are currently in prison in Iran.

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