Canadian Journalists for Free Expression appalled at attack on journalist in Mississauga, Canada

From the FAIFE-L listserv.

It's chilling to realize that freedom of speech can result in violent attacks, even in a country like Canada where that right is protected in our Charter.


(Toronto, April 19, 2007) CJFE is appalled and shocked by the news that journalist Jawaad Faizi was attacked in Mississauga, Ontario on the evening of April 17. Faizi works for the Mississauga-based newspaper, The Pakistan Post.

Jawaad Faizi describes being attacked by two men in his car outside the home of his Editor, Amir Arain. Two men, one armed with a cricket bat, smashed the car windows and hit Faizi inside the car. When they saw Faizi call 911 on his cell phone, they fled the scene. Paramedics and police, and his editor arrived soon afterwards.

According to Jawaad Faizi, the two men threatened him and said that he should cease writing against Islam, and against the Pakistan-based religious organisation, Idara Minhaj-ul-Quran, and its leader, Cleric Allama Tahir-Ul-Qadri. Allama Tahir-Ul-Qadri is a frequent visitor to Canada.

Both Arain and Faizi have received telephoned threats previous to this attack, and, in fact, on Monday, April 16, they filed a complaint with the police, and had also informed police about other threats they received in January. Police say that they cannot comment on the status of the investigation, but because of the nature of the attack this will probably be sent to the Criminal Investigation Unit and the Diversity Relations Unit.

"That this attack happened here in Canada is of great concern to us," said CJFE Executive Director Anne Game. "We call on the police to treat this matter extremely seriously and ensure that a full investigation into the attack is initiated immediately."

The attack, which sent Jawaad Faizi to hospital for treatment of injuries to his left arm, has caused him to miss two days of work. And on Wednesday, he received a call from the Vice-Principal of the school his three children attend, asking him to keep them at home, as they may pose a security risk.

Faizi states that he would be able to identify his attackers, which may put him at even greater risk of further attacks. In a phone interview with CJFE, Jawaad said "I had so many problems back home [in Lahore, Pakistan] as a journalist, but I'm shocked that this is happening here."

CJFE is very concerned about the nature of this attack and the potential chill on journalists writing about faith-based issues. This is a cautionary tale for us, and points to the need for vigilance in the protection of press freedom not just in other countries, but in Canada as well.

Canadian Journalists for Free Expression (CJFE) is an association of more than 300 journalists, editors, publishers, producers, students and others who work to promote and defend free expression and press freedom in Canada and around the world.

MORE INFORMATION:
e-mail: cjfe@cjfe.org, Internet: http://www.cjfe.org

FLIF updates

Apologies for the unintentional and long hiatus.

I have a few updates to pass on. With the end of the year came graduation, which means that we have lost our fabulous co-chairs, Tanya and Dai. Fortunatly, they are being succeeded by the equally fabulous Camilla and Melanie.

I'm still trying to keep the blog updated semi regularly (cough, save for the latest hiatus), but I expect that it will be a bit lax over the summer (sigh, I just don't get to play on my computer as much as I like to what with a real job and all). As always, if you have any links or news items that you think we should post, please feel free to fire them off to flifblog at gmail dot com

Hope spring is being good to all of you so far!

Clarification

It's the end of the term. Our brains aren't crammed to capacity with bits of school related knowledge. So, I figured that this would be a good time to remind you that FLIF blog will continue to update over the summer. It may not be updated as frequently as we have strived to update it throughout the school year, but it will be updated nonetheless.

So, feel free to alert us to anything that we should post, any cool links, and actions we should be promoting.

Privacy and confidentiality

Promoting privacy and confidentiality may seem counter to the idea of intellectual freedom and anti-censorship, but I think that it is important to under stand the importance of privacy and confidentiality in some contexts. Don Wood has written and interesting post: Why privacy and confidentiality are important.

Hometown Baghdad

This is really amazing : Hometown Baghdad. It's a web documentary of life in Baghdad. I've only watched a few of the episodes so far, but they have been really fascinating. We forget that Canada is a peaceful, relatively safe place to be that does not require baracading ourselves in our houses to stay safe.

Source: Thanks to Tanya

Remembering the looting of the Iraq National Museum

Four years and one week ago, between April 10th and 12th 2003, the Iraq National Museum was broken into, looted and a lot of old and valuable things were destroyed. The group SAFE (Saving Antiquities for Everyone) issued a call for candlelight vigils to be held. So, last week FLIF hosted such an event. Sadly, I was unable to attend, but I wanted to post about it because (a) I should have last week (please forgive me fellow FLIFers) and (b) I think that it is important for us to recognize that this kind of stuff is going on. Furthermore, the looting is being supported by buyers. People are buying illegally obtained national and historical treasures. And, many of those people are getting awya with it.

The destruction is terrible too (though, I have noted that looting garners more attention then damage done because of bombs and such - I guess no one wants to admit that they and their bombs are just as much at fault). At least when an item is stolen, it still exists somewhere. There's still hope that it will find its way back to where it belongs. But, when it is destroyed, then we lose a vluable piece of history. Not just that of Iraq, but of the world.

Hopefully the candlelight vigils will bring awareness to the masses - let them know that there is a whole lot more to Iraq then alledged terrorists and desert and humble little villages. There was also a history, a culture, and intellectual thread that deserves to be preserved.

End of term madness

Sorry for the lack of posts ... it's the end of term and we are all feeling a bit overwhelmed with final projects.

Just for the record, this blog will continue through out the summer ... it is meant to be a continuous project, and we will strive to keep it as such.

More about the BC Legislative library

In response to our last post, Sylvia gave us a link to her blog: Save the Legislative Library of B.C.! Check it out - there's some iteresting stuff there.

BC Legislative Library to close?

Someone posted this on the library_grrls Livejournal community: British Columbia Legislative Library threatened with closure

The Christian perspective?

An interesting article, "Conservative wants to set Wikipedia right", discusses Conservapedia, the latest wiki in town.

Conservapedia is for those who find Wikipedia to be biased towards a more liberal, anti-Christian and anti-American stance. It keeps a list of alledged Wikipedia biases, including the use of B.C.E./C.E versus the more Christian use of B.C./A.D. and the fact that the editors of Wikipedia are proportionally six times more liberal then the American population. Some of their more popular pages include ones on the theory of evolution and dinosaurs. Interestingly, George W. Bush made it into the top ten (number 9), but Jesus doesn't (number 11).

Long live freedom of speech!

Source: thanks for the links Sarah

Sometimes, online rebellions work

Online rebellion forces censors to back down on banned books

"A wave of online outrage has forced Chinese censors into an unprecedented
decision to allow eight banned books to remain on the shelves."

Freedom to read the Swimsuit Edition

Sports Illustrated censors itself: Sports Illustrated Withholds Swimsuit Issue from Libraries, Schools

Source: Tanya

Whistleblowers wiki

Wikileaks

This is an interesting offshoot of Wikipedia: a website where whistleblowers can go to denounce unfair practices, especially in oppressive regimes,while keeping their anonymity.

Wikileaks is developing an uncensorable Wikipedia for untraceable mass document leaking and analysis. Our primary interests are oppressive regimes in Asia, the former Soviet bloc, Sub-Saharan Africa and the Middle East, but we also expect to be of assistance to those in the west who wish to reveal unethical behavior in their own governments and corporations. We aim for maximum political impact; this means our interface is identical to Wikipedia and usable by non-technical people. We have received over 1.2 million documents so far from dissident communities and anonymous sources.

We believe that transparency in government activities leads to reduced corruption, better government and stronger democracies. Many governments would benefit from increased scrutiny by the world community, as well as their own people. We believe this scrutiny requires information. Historically that information has been costly - in terms of human life and human rights. Wikileaks will facilitate safety in the ethical leaking movement.

Wikileaks opens leaked documents up to a much more exacting scrutiny than any media organization or intelligence agency could provide. Wikileaks will provide a forum for the entire global community to examine any document for credibility, plausibility, veracity and falsifiability. They will be able to interpret documents and explain their relevance to the public. If a document comes from the Chinese government, the entire Chinese dissident community can freely scrutinize and discuss it; if a document arrives from Iran, the entire Farsi community can analyze it and put it in context. Our first sample analysis is available from the news page, providing a look into the future of what Wikileaks can provide.

Source: IFLA listserv, FAIFE-L
... Thanks Melanie!

France bans citizen journalists from reporting violence

Law could lead to imprisonment of amateur videographers and Web site operators who publish their images

By Peter Sayer, IDG News Service (March 06, 2007)

The French Constitutional Council has approved a law that criminalizes the filming or broadcasting of acts of violence by people other than professional journalists. The law could lead to the imprisonment of eyewitnesses who film acts of police violence, or operators of Web sites publishing the images, one French civil liberties group warned on Tuesday.

The council chose an unfortunate anniversary to publish its decision approving the law, which came exactly 16 years after Los Angeles police officers beating Rodney King were filmed by amateur videographer George Holliday in the night of March 3, 1991. The officers' acquittal at the end on April 29, 1992 sparked riots in Los Angeles.

If Holliday were to film a similar scene of violence in France today, he could end up in prison as a result of the new law, said Pascal Cohet, a spokesman for French online civil liberties group Odebi. And anyone publishing such images could face up to five years in prison and a fine of (E);75,000 ($98,537), potentially a harsher sentence than that for committing the violent act.

Senators and members of the National Assembly had asked the council to rule on the constitutionality of six articles of the Law relating to the prevention of delinquency. The articles dealt with information sharing by social workers, and reduced sentences for minors. The council recommended one minor change, to reconcile conflicting amendments voted in parliament.

The law, proposed by Minister of the Interior Nicolas Sarkozy, is intended to clamp down on a wide range of public order offenses. During parliamentary debate of the law, government representatives said the offense of filming or distributing films of acts of violence targets the practice of "happy slapping," in which a violent attack is filmed by an accomplice, typically with a camera phone, for the amusement of the attacker's friends.

The broad drafting of the law so as to criminalize the activities of citizen journalists unrelated to the perpetrators of violent acts is no accident, but rather a deliberate decision by the authorities, said Cohet. He is concerned that the law, and others still being debated, will lead to the creation of a parallel judicial system controlling the publication of information on the Internet.

The government has also proposed a certification system for Web sites, blog hosters, mobile-phone operators and Internet service providers, identifying them as government-approved sources of information if they adhere to certain rules. The journalists' organization Reporters Without Borders, which campaigns for a free press, has warned that such a system could lead to excessive self censorship as organizations worried about losing their certification suppress certain stories.

Source: IFLA's FAIFE-L listserv

Search engine censorship

Google, Yahoo, MSN (and likely many more) censor search results in some countries. Find out more in the Google Censorship FAQ, then thank your lucky stars if you are in a country where they don't censor the search results.

Working Together Project

This looks like it could be very interesting (especially for those of you looking to work in a public library setting): Working Together Project

In their own words, the the sites creators "hope to use this space to share what we’ve been learning from the community about social exclusion and public libraries and librarianship."

The Great Firewall of China

Great Firewall of China- this site lets you test a URL in real-time to see if it is visible to Internet users in China.

-jocelyn

Censorship in Belarusian Internet cafes

The Belarusian Council of Ministers adopted on 10 February 2007 a new act on the Regulations on Functioning of the Computer Clubs and Internet Cafes that will impose new censorship rules on all the persons that use the public Internet access points.

According to the new regulations, Internet cafe owners or their authorized agents must keep an electronic registry of the domain names of the sites accessed by users. The electronic log should contain at least a 12-month history of all connections. State Security agents, police or state control inspectors are authorized to review the log in the cases listed by the legislation.

In cases of suspicion of infringement of this law, the Internet cafe management should inform the law enforcement bodies about such events.

The computer clubs and Internet cafes are not allowed to use programs propagating the cult of violence, cruelty and pornography, or disseminate banned information.

The Belarusian Government has very easy ways to regulate the Internet activity within the country, since the only Internet provider is the governmental Beltelecom organization, according to Reporters Without Borders.

See also:
Belarusian government adopts regulations on computer clubs and internet cafes (15.02.2007)

Belorussia tightens control over internet (15.02.2007)

Source: IFLA listserv

Censorship: Still a burning issue

http://enjoyment.independent.co.uk/books/features/article2294384.ece
Published: 22 February 2007

"If you want to know what defines an era, look no further than the authors, artists and activists who fell foul if it. Censorship is as old as civilisation itself - and the drive to suppress as strong today as ever. As 'The Independent' launches a major series of the greatest banned books in
history, Boyd Tonkin asks whether the thought police will ever learn"

"So read these formidable literary pariahs with an eye on our age, as well as theirs. In olden days a glimpse of stocking was looked on as something shocking - but, otherwise, Cole Porter got it wrong. Heaven knows, anything definitely doesn't go these days. The prudes and persecutors have simply changed tack and chosen different ground, as they always have."

Source: IFLA listserv

More challenged books

Bookslut, a must have site for all book lovers (no, it is not a naughty site), has a great page that lists some challenged books and the reasons why they were challenged in some places. It also notes that for every reported challenge, there are 4 or 5 unreported challenges.

Another great resource is the Alibris site (it's like Chapters, but for independent new and used book sellers). They have a list (with reasons why) of banned children's books and a list of books that were banned for political reasons. They even have a list of frequently challenged authors (with links to their books).

Happy reading!





Keep reading those banned books!