I came across a report from BBC News regarding the increasing number of arrests of bloggers in the world. The statistics and trends are reported from the World Information Access Report 2008. Since 2003, 64 bloggers have been arrested for publishing their views on a blog. It might be interesting to look at some of the trends. The bloggers are arrested for the following reasons: (i) exposed corruption in government, (ii) abuse of human rights or suppression
of protests or (iii) they criticised public policies and took political figures
to task. The average prison sentence for the bloggers who are arrested is about 15 months, and the longest sentence served is 8 years. Currently, about 30 countries have imposed technological restrictions on what people can do online. There seemed to be an increasing trend of countries broadening legislation on online media.
From the graph, Singapore contributed 4 cases till the first quarter of 2008. Actually, I was looking for the exact cases that related to the datapoints on the above graph. Two of them in purple indicated violating cultural norms, and if I am not wrong refers to the cases for sedition act. I am not sure about the other two but I suppose that it is related to the defamation cases.
Reference: Howard, Philip N, and World Information Access Project. World Information Access Report - 2008. 3. Seattle: University of Washington, 2008.
On another note, there will be a seminar on Internet Regulatory Reform this coming Saturday in Singapore. Organised by the Wee Kim Wee School of Communication and Information - NTU, the event will be held on 21 June 2008, 2-5 pm in URA Centre, Maxwell Road, Function Hall, Level 5. The admission is free and RSVP is required. The speakers for the event will be Mr Arun Mahizhnan, Deputy Director, Institute of Policy Studies and presentations made by members of the Bloggers’ Group for Internet Deregulation and chaired by Asst Prof Cherian George, Wee Kim Wee School, NTU. The aim of the seminar is to solicit feedback from the public on the blogger proposals submitted to Ministry of Information, Communication & the Arts recently.
To register (RSVP), please send an empty email to : irr-singapore-subscribe@googlegroups.com. You will get an email response asking you to confirm your request.
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