Text of report by Paris-based media freedom organization Reporters Sans Frontieres (RSF) on 18 August
Reporters Without Borders reiterates its condemnation of the government's behaviour towards certain opposition websites after lawyer and website editor Abdallah Souleiman Ali was detained for 12 days for "persisting in publishing legal and political articles criticizing the role of the government". It was the second time he has been targeted since March.
"His arrest was an unacceptable but unfortunately common intimidatory method," the press freedom organization said. "The owners of opposition websites are constantly harassed by the Syrian authorities and are often held incommunicado although the constitution guarantees free expression. We urge the government to put a stop to its harassment of Souleiman."
Arrested on 30 July, Souleiman was held for 12 days at the state security department in Damascus because of articles that criticized Prime Minister Muhammad Naji al-Itri and claimed that he headed a "strategic operations" government.
Souleiman's website is called Al Nazaha (http://www.alnazaha.org), which means "Integrity". Created on 8 August 2005, it focuses mainly on legal and political issues and defends the independence of the judicial system. The company that hosts the site rendered it inaccessible in November 2006 after getting a visit from the Damascus state security department. A hacker attack erased all of the site's content on 23 June 2007.
Access to the site was blocked in October 2007 as a result of a Damascus court decision. Souleiman sued the telecommunications ministry the following month to get the decision rescinded. The complaint was eventually withdrawn.
Since March of this year, the Al Nazaha site has been accessible at a new address: http://www.alnazahanews.com. But Souleiman has been repeatedly interrogated and threatened in an attempt to force him to close his site.
The Syrian Mirror (http://www.syrian-mirror.com) and Syria Life (http://www.syria-life.com) websites were recently the target of similar threats. An independent news website, Syrian Mirror was blocked on 18 April 2006 after operating for just over three years. Syria Life was blocked on 13 February 2008.
Syria is on the Reporters Without Borders list of "Internet Enemies". At least five cyber-dissidents are currently in jail in Syria for expressing their views online, which makes it the Middle East's most repressive country as regards internet users.
Article 38 of the constitution nonetheless says: "Each citizen has the right to express their views freely to everyone, in writing or by any other means of communication (...) The state guarantees freedom of expression, printing and publication in accordance with the republic's laws."
Source: Reporters Sans Frontieres press release, Paris, in English 18 Aug 08
Showing posts with label facebook. Show all posts
Showing posts with label facebook. Show all posts
Monday, 18 August 2008
Social networks leap the language barrier
Business | Nothing has got lost in translation as the likes of Facebook and MySpace win millions of converts in new countries. By Catherine Holahan
When Facebook chief executive Mark Zuckerberg wants to illustrate the impact of his social network, he tells a story about several young religious militants from Lebanon who changed their view of Western culture through Facebook friendships. The subtext to the tale is that free expression of ideas, enabled by the web, bridges deep cultural divides.
But we knew that: it's one of the central concepts behind the Olympics, after all. What we didn't know is that Facebook is in Lebanon.
In fact, it is expanding rapidly in many regions. According to figures released by market research firm comScore last week, the site is the top global social network. Of Facebook's 132 million users, nearly 63 per cent are outside North America. The site, which had already been translated into 20 languages including French, Spanish and Mandarin, has recently added 69 more.
"Now, through translations, we are seeing a lot of growth abroad," said Javier Olivan, international manager at Facebook, in a recent interview.
As American sites such as Facebook and News Corporation's MySpace saturate their home markets, they are looking abroad to fuel the audience growth that has made them so attractive to users, advertisers, acquirers and would-be inves-tors. MySpace has expanded to more than 29 countries, including India and Korea, in the past few years.
MySpace is particularly popular with users in Puerto Rico, Australia, Britain and Malaysia, according to a study by Pingdom, a Swedish service that monitors website availability. Pingdom based its findings on the regions where a particular social network is searched for most often via Google. For instance, the countries with the greatest interest in LinkedIn, a network aimed at professionals, are India, the Netherlands, Denmark, Belgium and the US.
But Facebook has been particularly successful in terms of sheer user adoption. Its number of new members was up 153 per cent in June from the same month a year earlier, driven mainly by astronomical growth in Europe, Asia, the Middle East and Latin America. Among specific countries Turkey, Canada, Britain, South Africa and Colombia have the greatest interest, according to Pingdom.
By comparison, Facebook's North American audience grew just 38 per cent in June and MySpace was up only 3 per cent, according to comScore.
Facebook owes its results, in part, to its technology-driven international strategy. Rather than launch local-language versions of Facebook for new markets, complete with a local Facebook bureau, it opted to provide translation tools that let users take the existing site and personalise it in their own tongue.
The tools, which users can tweak to create more accurate translations, helped Facebook roll out in new countries faster than many rivals, giving it an early presence in local markets that grew exponentially as users encouraged their friends to join the site.
MySpace has taken a different tack. It is opening offices in countries where it knows there are advertising dollars, as well as friends, to be made.
The strategy makes the company slower at expanding in new markets, but MySpace believes the approach will ultimately mean that its local offerings are better equipped to reflect the cultures of new countries while also catering to advertisers. The site's non-US audiences will soon account for more than 50 per cent of its revenues, explains Jeff Berman, MySpace's president of sales and marketing.
Hi5 is following a hybrid strategy. In May, the San Francisco-based social network launched tools enabling users to translate the site into any language. Before that, Hi5 had hired a third-party service provider, Lionbridge, to translate it into languages like Japanese and make it reflect the added countries' cultures.
The company's user base has grown to more than 56 million, thanks in large part to those efforts, according to Andrew Lipsman, an analyst at comScore. "Hi5 has really put an emphasis on cultural relevance beyond just the translation," he says.
The site is popular throughout Latin America, home to four of the five countries where it shows up most often in searches, according to Pingdom.
Although Facebook has focused on tools, it isn't ruling out opening local bureaux to help make the site more culturally relevant - and to sell ads. But executives aren't convinced that new offices are necessary. Once there are users, the thinking goes, advertisers will follow.
"The platform is open, and as soon as advertisers find value, they just start creating campaigns," says Mr Olivan. "So it is pretty much universal."
When Facebook chief executive Mark Zuckerberg wants to illustrate the impact of his social network, he tells a story about several young religious militants from Lebanon who changed their view of Western culture through Facebook friendships. The subtext to the tale is that free expression of ideas, enabled by the web, bridges deep cultural divides.
But we knew that: it's one of the central concepts behind the Olympics, after all. What we didn't know is that Facebook is in Lebanon.
In fact, it is expanding rapidly in many regions. According to figures released by market research firm comScore last week, the site is the top global social network. Of Facebook's 132 million users, nearly 63 per cent are outside North America. The site, which had already been translated into 20 languages including French, Spanish and Mandarin, has recently added 69 more.
"Now, through translations, we are seeing a lot of growth abroad," said Javier Olivan, international manager at Facebook, in a recent interview.
As American sites such as Facebook and News Corporation's MySpace saturate their home markets, they are looking abroad to fuel the audience growth that has made them so attractive to users, advertisers, acquirers and would-be inves-tors. MySpace has expanded to more than 29 countries, including India and Korea, in the past few years.
MySpace is particularly popular with users in Puerto Rico, Australia, Britain and Malaysia, according to a study by Pingdom, a Swedish service that monitors website availability. Pingdom based its findings on the regions where a particular social network is searched for most often via Google. For instance, the countries with the greatest interest in LinkedIn, a network aimed at professionals, are India, the Netherlands, Denmark, Belgium and the US.
But Facebook has been particularly successful in terms of sheer user adoption. Its number of new members was up 153 per cent in June from the same month a year earlier, driven mainly by astronomical growth in Europe, Asia, the Middle East and Latin America. Among specific countries Turkey, Canada, Britain, South Africa and Colombia have the greatest interest, according to Pingdom.
By comparison, Facebook's North American audience grew just 38 per cent in June and MySpace was up only 3 per cent, according to comScore.
Facebook owes its results, in part, to its technology-driven international strategy. Rather than launch local-language versions of Facebook for new markets, complete with a local Facebook bureau, it opted to provide translation tools that let users take the existing site and personalise it in their own tongue.
The tools, which users can tweak to create more accurate translations, helped Facebook roll out in new countries faster than many rivals, giving it an early presence in local markets that grew exponentially as users encouraged their friends to join the site.
MySpace has taken a different tack. It is opening offices in countries where it knows there are advertising dollars, as well as friends, to be made.
The strategy makes the company slower at expanding in new markets, but MySpace believes the approach will ultimately mean that its local offerings are better equipped to reflect the cultures of new countries while also catering to advertisers. The site's non-US audiences will soon account for more than 50 per cent of its revenues, explains Jeff Berman, MySpace's president of sales and marketing.
Hi5 is following a hybrid strategy. In May, the San Francisco-based social network launched tools enabling users to translate the site into any language. Before that, Hi5 had hired a third-party service provider, Lionbridge, to translate it into languages like Japanese and make it reflect the added countries' cultures.
The company's user base has grown to more than 56 million, thanks in large part to those efforts, according to Andrew Lipsman, an analyst at comScore. "Hi5 has really put an emphasis on cultural relevance beyond just the translation," he says.
The site is popular throughout Latin America, home to four of the five countries where it shows up most often in searches, according to Pingdom.
Although Facebook has focused on tools, it isn't ruling out opening local bureaux to help make the site more culturally relevant - and to sell ads. But executives aren't convinced that new offices are necessary. Once there are users, the thinking goes, advertisers will follow.
"The platform is open, and as soon as advertisers find value, they just start creating campaigns," says Mr Olivan. "So it is pretty much universal."
Thursday, 24 July 2008
Egypt jails Facebook activists for 'threatening national security'
Police have arrested 26 Internet activists in the port of Alexandria, and 14 of them were jailed for more than two weeks for "threatening national security," a security official said on Thursday.
Around 30 young Egyptians who belong to the so-called "6 April" group on social networking site Facebook, a group which earlier this year called for a day of protests at rising prices, gathered in Alexandria on Wednesday.
"We were heading for Sidi Beshr beach but a policeman prevented us getting there because we had a large kite painted with the Egyptian flag and we were wearing T-shirts with 'April 6 Movement' on," said Mohammed Abdel Aziz.
He said that in the evening the group was walking along the seafront singing nationalist songs when police arrived and arrested 14 of them, he said.
The official confirmed the arrests and said another 12 were detained on Thursday.
The first 14 arrested have been jailed for 15 days under emergency laws for "threatening public security," the official said, while the others are still being questioned.
The arrests "indicate the security agencies are targeting 35 young men and women who are members of the 6th of April group and all attending a trip arranged by the group," the Arabic Network for Human Rights Information (ANHRI) said in a statement.
ANHRI tried to contact those detained "but all their mobile phones are turned off, which raises concerns, especially with the well-known practice of torture" where they are being held, it said.
Esra Abdel Fattah, the woman who set up the April 6 group in March calling for protests against price hikes, was detained at the time but freed after her mother made an appeal to Interior Minister Habib al-Adli.
Fattah, 27, was among several bloggers arrested ahead of what was supposed to be a nationwide protest on April 6.
Egyptian police took her from a Cairo coffee shop a week before the planned day of action. Her Facebook group had 64,000 members, but observation of the day of protest was sporadic.
Instead, protests focused on the Nile Delta city of Mahalla, where three people were killed by police after clashes erupted when demonstrators pulled down posters of President Hosni Mubarak.
str-iba/cjo/srm
Around 30 young Egyptians who belong to the so-called "6 April" group on social networking site Facebook, a group which earlier this year called for a day of protests at rising prices, gathered in Alexandria on Wednesday.
"We were heading for Sidi Beshr beach but a policeman prevented us getting there because we had a large kite painted with the Egyptian flag and we were wearing T-shirts with 'April 6 Movement' on," said Mohammed Abdel Aziz.
He said that in the evening the group was walking along the seafront singing nationalist songs when police arrived and arrested 14 of them, he said.
The official confirmed the arrests and said another 12 were detained on Thursday.
The first 14 arrested have been jailed for 15 days under emergency laws for "threatening public security," the official said, while the others are still being questioned.
The arrests "indicate the security agencies are targeting 35 young men and women who are members of the 6th of April group and all attending a trip arranged by the group," the Arabic Network for Human Rights Information (ANHRI) said in a statement.
ANHRI tried to contact those detained "but all their mobile phones are turned off, which raises concerns, especially with the well-known practice of torture" where they are being held, it said.
Esra Abdel Fattah, the woman who set up the April 6 group in March calling for protests against price hikes, was detained at the time but freed after her mother made an appeal to Interior Minister Habib al-Adli.
Fattah, 27, was among several bloggers arrested ahead of what was supposed to be a nationwide protest on April 6.
Egyptian police took her from a Cairo coffee shop a week before the planned day of action. Her Facebook group had 64,000 members, but observation of the day of protest was sporadic.
Instead, protests focused on the Nile Delta city of Mahalla, where three people were killed by police after clashes erupted when demonstrators pulled down posters of President Hosni Mubarak.
str-iba/cjo/srm
Tuesday, 8 July 2008
Politics on Facebook brings trouble for young Egyptian
Liam Stack Correspondent for The Christian Science Monitor
When Egypt's secular opposition groups called for a nationwide strike to support disgruntled factory workers last April, Ahmed Maher wanted to help. So he did what many middle-class 20- somethings here do: He logged onto Facebook.
Two weeks before the strike, he and a friend, Esraa Abdel Fattah, started a group on the popular social-networking site to support the walkout and invited friends to join. But soon they realized they had much more than just a new Facebook group on their hands.
In Egypt, a country still under the iron-fisted rule of President Hosni Mubarak, even something as seemingly innocuous as Facebook can run afoul of the red lines around unacceptable political activity.
And as the popularity of the page grew, Egyptian authorities took notice.
"We started a group and sent it to 160 people on her friend list and 140 people on my friend list, and at the end of the day, there were almost 3,000 people in the group," says Mr. Maher. "We were both really surprised."
By the day of the strike, more than 60,000 Egyptians had joined the group, and Maher went into hiding rather than face the possible wrath of the country's feared State Security Investigations (SSI) unit.
When opposition leaders called a second strike, since the first one didn't materialize, he decided to stay on the run until it was over. He slept in his car, under his desk at work, and in friends' apartments. All the while, his family was watched by security forces.
"I heard rumors that state security might start taking people, so I got ready in case it happened to me," he says. "I would drive my car somewhere deserted and sleep there, or sleep at work. I tried to disappear."
Even though the second nationwide strike never got off the ground, Maher was arrested in early May, just two days after he had returned home, by four carloads of plainclothes police.
In an interview last week, Maher says he was shackled, blindfolded, and stripped. He says the police dragged him across the floor and beat him for almost 12 hours. They demanded to know the password to his Facebook account and asked for information about the 60,000 people in the group, then threatened to rape him if he would not comply, he says.
"Maher's treatment is part of a pattern of abuse and extralegal intimidation by state officials," says Joe Stork, Middle East deputy director at Human Rights Watch. "Egypt needs to put an end to the lawlessness of its law enforcement officers."
"The government must show that those responsible for upholding the law are also subject to the law," he added, calling the SSI units "thugs."
After his 12-hour ordeal, Maher was put in a small cell where officers treated his bruises and tried to explain themselves. "They came to me and tried to apologize," says Maher. "They kept saying 'Oh, the men who beat you were just a few bad guys. We love Egypt, too. We love this country as much as you do, but Egyptians aren't ready for democracy. Just look at what happened in Iraq."
In Egypt, opposing the government is risky. Since the country's brief flirtation with political liberalization in 2005, the government has imprisoned critics and challengers. Among them is Ayman Nour, the runner-up to President Mubarak in the last election, who won less than 10 percent of the vote.
"In 2005 and 2006, a lot of young people were going out into the streets and telling people that the government has obligations and duties to protect them, and that they should demand their rights," says Maher. "But the last few years, all these people have been arrested and tortured. Now we are back [to] the historical problem we have here, that everyone thinks that getting involved in politics is really dangerous," he adds.
Maher says that he still receives harassing phone calls and threats of rape from the Egyptian authorities, but remains intent on transforming his Facebook group, which is still online, into a real political organization. He recently met with opposition leaders to brainstorm ideas for a movement called "Facebook Youth."
In a politically repressive environment, some activists find websites such as Facebook appealing because they offer anonymity. But critics say it's a mistake to look to websites like Facebook or personal blogs as the seeds of a meaningful political movement.
"People are talking about Facebook the same way they used to talk about blogs and 'the bloggers,' saying that it is going to bring about freedom and change," says a well-known Egyptian opposition blogger who goes by the name Sandmonkey. He doesn't use his real name for fear of government reprisal. "It's not going to bring about anything. These sites are just a way to express your opinions. It is just a bunch of disgruntled people sitting around online."
He worries that Egyptians who join online anti-government groups will not want to take to the streets. Without actual contact, a movement is hard to build.
But the government's response to Maher's site shows that it is nonetheless concerned by Internet activism.
When Egypt's secular opposition groups called for a nationwide strike to support disgruntled factory workers last April, Ahmed Maher wanted to help. So he did what many middle-class 20- somethings here do: He logged onto Facebook.
Two weeks before the strike, he and a friend, Esraa Abdel Fattah, started a group on the popular social-networking site to support the walkout and invited friends to join. But soon they realized they had much more than just a new Facebook group on their hands.
In Egypt, a country still under the iron-fisted rule of President Hosni Mubarak, even something as seemingly innocuous as Facebook can run afoul of the red lines around unacceptable political activity.
And as the popularity of the page grew, Egyptian authorities took notice.
"We started a group and sent it to 160 people on her friend list and 140 people on my friend list, and at the end of the day, there were almost 3,000 people in the group," says Mr. Maher. "We were both really surprised."
By the day of the strike, more than 60,000 Egyptians had joined the group, and Maher went into hiding rather than face the possible wrath of the country's feared State Security Investigations (SSI) unit.
When opposition leaders called a second strike, since the first one didn't materialize, he decided to stay on the run until it was over. He slept in his car, under his desk at work, and in friends' apartments. All the while, his family was watched by security forces.
"I heard rumors that state security might start taking people, so I got ready in case it happened to me," he says. "I would drive my car somewhere deserted and sleep there, or sleep at work. I tried to disappear."
Even though the second nationwide strike never got off the ground, Maher was arrested in early May, just two days after he had returned home, by four carloads of plainclothes police.
In an interview last week, Maher says he was shackled, blindfolded, and stripped. He says the police dragged him across the floor and beat him for almost 12 hours. They demanded to know the password to his Facebook account and asked for information about the 60,000 people in the group, then threatened to rape him if he would not comply, he says.
"Maher's treatment is part of a pattern of abuse and extralegal intimidation by state officials," says Joe Stork, Middle East deputy director at Human Rights Watch. "Egypt needs to put an end to the lawlessness of its law enforcement officers."
"The government must show that those responsible for upholding the law are also subject to the law," he added, calling the SSI units "thugs."
After his 12-hour ordeal, Maher was put in a small cell where officers treated his bruises and tried to explain themselves. "They came to me and tried to apologize," says Maher. "They kept saying 'Oh, the men who beat you were just a few bad guys. We love Egypt, too. We love this country as much as you do, but Egyptians aren't ready for democracy. Just look at what happened in Iraq."
In Egypt, opposing the government is risky. Since the country's brief flirtation with political liberalization in 2005, the government has imprisoned critics and challengers. Among them is Ayman Nour, the runner-up to President Mubarak in the last election, who won less than 10 percent of the vote.
"In 2005 and 2006, a lot of young people were going out into the streets and telling people that the government has obligations and duties to protect them, and that they should demand their rights," says Maher. "But the last few years, all these people have been arrested and tortured. Now we are back [to] the historical problem we have here, that everyone thinks that getting involved in politics is really dangerous," he adds.
Maher says that he still receives harassing phone calls and threats of rape from the Egyptian authorities, but remains intent on transforming his Facebook group, which is still online, into a real political organization. He recently met with opposition leaders to brainstorm ideas for a movement called "Facebook Youth."
In a politically repressive environment, some activists find websites such as Facebook appealing because they offer anonymity. But critics say it's a mistake to look to websites like Facebook or personal blogs as the seeds of a meaningful political movement.
"People are talking about Facebook the same way they used to talk about blogs and 'the bloggers,' saying that it is going to bring about freedom and change," says a well-known Egyptian opposition blogger who goes by the name Sandmonkey. He doesn't use his real name for fear of government reprisal. "It's not going to bring about anything. These sites are just a way to express your opinions. It is just a bunch of disgruntled people sitting around online."
He worries that Egyptians who join online anti-government groups will not want to take to the streets. Without actual contact, a movement is hard to build.
But the government's response to Maher's site shows that it is nonetheless concerned by Internet activism.
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