American Journalists Ling and Lee Get Twelve Years Hard Labor in North Korea

American journalists Laura Ling and Euna Lee have been sentenced to twelve years in a North Korean labor camp, the Korean government has just announced. Ling and Lee were arrested in March while shooting footage of refugees on the border of China and North Korea. They were filming in China but allegedly crossed into North Korean territory when they were detained. The refugees Ling and Lee were covering had fled North Korea for China in search of food. According to KCNA, the country's official news agency, the two women have been convicted of “committing hostilities against the Korean nation and illegal entry” although they have not specified what these "hostilities"entailed.

A statement just released by Reporters Without Borders says "The sentences were clearly designed to scare journalists trying to do investigative reporting in the border area between China and North Korea, which is ranked as Asia’s worst country in the Reporters Without Borders press freedom index."

Many suggest that the two women--Lee, the mother of a four year old daughter, and Ling, who is said to have an ulcer and require medical attention--are merely being used as political pawns as relations between the U.S. and North Korea deteriorate. This sentence comes just one month after the U.S. pushed for UN sanctions against North Korea for testing nuclear weapons.

In two previous incidents in 1994 and 1996 when Americans have been held hostage in North Korea, it took a trip to Pyongyang by then congressman Bill Richardson to leverage the release of the prisoners.

The International Women's Media Foundation and Reporters Without Borders have launched a petition for the release of the two women. Click here to sign the petition.

Journalists Attempting to Cover Tiananmen Anniversary are Blocked

Twenty years after the Chinese government rolled tanks into Tiananmen Square to stop government protests, little has changed in terms of censorship and government control. Here is a video of a CNN reporter attempting to report from the square. It seems in China, censorship can be as high tech as blocking popular websites or as low tech as umbrellas.

Twitterers in China : What the Censorship on the 20th Anniversary of Tiananmen is Really Achieving

The web exploded yesterday with the news that in preparation for the 20th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square Massacre, the Chinese government blocked social networking sites including Twitter, Flickr, and Hotmail. Ironically it was the frustrated, angry, and sometimes joyously defiant “tweets” from many expats living in China that helped spread the news of the censorship.

“We call it being ‘harmonized’ here,” said one Twitter user , an America living in South China, where his teaching contract forbids him from political discourse and therefore wishes to remain anonymous. Many of the most tech-savvy are able to get around the ban using various proxy servers, connecting to a server in another country, and even using Twinkle, the i-Phone application for Twitter. Earliest reports suggested that the platform TweetDeck was being used as a workaround, but all who we spoke to said that service was intermittent or that it wasn’t working at all.

The South China professor says he sees an added curiosity in his students as a result of the censorship. "I have often said that the next internal revolution will come as a result of the myriad communication tools available like 3-G. That and a growing dissatisfaction with censorship will force change," he says. "At the very least the outages have caused students to ask far more questions than ever before."

Those discussing the issue on Twitter followed their posts with the hashtag #GFW for "great firewall" as a way to organize the conversation and so others could join in. But some worry that the tag is being used against rogue Tweeters as China discovers the tag and removes offending posts.

One active Twitter user, Robert Bono, a business analyst studying for his Masters at the University of International Business and Economics in Beijing, says that after years of staying silent, he has had enough of the blanket censorship.

“There is a generally accepted, but entirely publicly unspoken awareness that the media here presents a false picture of both internal and external affairs,” he says. “In terms of the average Chinese citizen, most here are aware of the events that took place twenty years ago in Tiananmen Square, but are too scared to discuss it publicly. It is Orwellian double-think on a massive scale.”

The government has taken numerous other measures to keep protests to a minimum, including scheduling exams for June 4th so students will be occupied in the classroom, and outright banning them from giving any interviews to the foreign press.

Bono says that this latest act of censorship has helped him decide to leave China for good, so he is "not particularly worried about any reprisals from the government" for speaking out on the issue.

When asked if he thinks the latest internet blockades will be able to successfully stop the flow of information or any commemorations relating to Tiananmen, one American living in China, who prefers to be known only by his Twitter name, WeirdChina, says that in the long term, it won't make a difference, but the problem in China is that many people don't even know they are being kept from information in the first place.

Junde Yu, a web entrepreneur from Singapore living in Guangzhou, created this now viral TwitPic of a crab catching the Twitter bird. The river crab is a symbol for censorship in China, and Yu says that although the governments main aim is to stop grassroots or student movements hoping to commemorate the massacre 20 years ago, there are few movements for them to worry about. No doubt the Chinese government took note of instances like the the revolt in Moldova latter dubbed the "Twitter Revolution" when preparing their censors for this anniversary.

Some have found a way to circumvent the seemingly all encompassing censorship. In remembrance of the of the unknown man made famous by the photo of him standing in the way of four military tanks, many say they will wear white shirts and blue pants in Beijing and other parts of China tomorrow.

Journalism and Iran

In the last few years, Iran has become the poster-child for all that is antithetical to a free and fair press. Reporters Without Borders ranks Iran 166th out of 173 countries in it's 2008 Annual Worldwide Press Freedom Index. Only China, Vietnam, Cuba, Burma, Turkmenistan, North Korea, and Eritrea have more repressive policies towards the press. The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has placed Iran on it's "Ten Worst Countries to be a Blogger" list and, as of 2008, counted five journalists imprisoned by Iran.

The recent coverage on the plight of Roxana Saberi, released from an Iranian prison on May 11, 2009 after spending 100 days behind bars, brought renewed attention to Iran's often repressive policies towards journalists. Azar Nafisi captivated readers, and propelled herself to the top of the New York Times Best Seller's List, with her memoir "Reading Lolita in Tehran". In her book, Afisi paints a poignant portait of women attempting to express themselves in a society which continuously represses their individuality.

Mohammad Hossein Fallahiyazadeh, Adnan Hassanpour, Mohammad Seddigh Kaboudvand, Massoud Kurdpour, and Mojtaba Lotfi currently remain imprisoned because of their reporting on issues that were deemed contrary to Iran's interests. Hassanpour was arrested for publishing a Kurdish-Persian weekly newspaper. Kaboudvand, Lotfi, and Fallahiyazadeh publicly denounced the Iranian government's harsh treatment of others. Kurdpour and Lotfi worked with other news outlets, including the BBC and Voice of America (VOA) and were thus charged with spreading propoganda against the regime and the spread of anti-state information respectively.

However, there are others who believe that reality is not as simple as the black-and-white picture painted by the majority of news outlets. Some argue that Iran's repressive policies are a manifestation of it's leaders' tight-rope walk between their extremist and more liberal sides.

Azadeh Moaveni recently wrote a column for Time.com in which she explains the requirements she has had to go through to be able to report in Iran. Moaveni acknowledges that "Iran's record of dealing with journalists is certainly stained." She also notes, with seeming regret, that she has had to give up many things in order to continue having access and her all-important press credentials. For example, after traveling to Iran to pursue a story she had promised an editor, she was told only after her arrival that she would not be allowed to write it. She has also been forced to give up travel to other regions she wishes to visit, such as Israel, in order to continue working in Iran. However, Moaveni also seems to indicate that the restrictions, while regrettable, are acceptable to someone who wants to paint a more complete picture of Iran and it's society today. She concludes by stating that " Of course a journalist who flouts the rules in Washington will risk access rather than imprisonment, but that's just one more benefit of living in a society with the luxury of nuance."

New Petition In Support of Release for US Journalists

Supporters of Laura Ling and Euna Lee, the two U.S. reporters currently being detained by North Korea, have launched a new petition ahead of their trial, set to begin June 4. Please click here if you would like to sign the petition.

Technorati Profile

Enlightening Profile on a Dentist Turned Writer and Government Critic

Yesterday's Guardian UK featured a profile on Alaa al Aswany, a bestselling Arab novelist who is known in his home country of Egypt for speaking out against the repressive regime under President Mubarak. Aswany, who never fully left his day job of practicing dentistry, is currently promoting his new book, Friendly Fire, along with a recently revived title, The Isam Abd el-Ati Papers, which was banned from Egypt a decade ago. Due to the unfavorable commentary on the country that appears in the book, the state run General Egyptian Book Organisation told Aswany that Isam Abd el-Ati Papers would never be published unless he removed the offending chapters. His next two books were bestsellers for five years in the Arab world and are read in 27 different languages.

When he is not filling cavities or penning bestsellers, Aswany also writes newspaper columns voicing his views on Egypt's regime. He says he's convinced that Democracy is coming to Egypt and that the country will soon serve as a model for other Arab countries. "Now there are more and more protests in the street. Everyone is on strike. There is real pressure, you can feel it. You cannot deny it, even if you're from the government."

When asked if his fame has kept him from governmental backlash, he says, "I cannot compare what has happened to me with what has happened to some of my friends and comrades who have been tortured and beaten. What has happened to me - banning me from attending the premiere of The Yacoubian Building - is negligible in comparison. But, in any case, writing and fear are absolutely contradictory. Writing is an expression against fear."


You can read the whole article at the Guardian UK’s site here.