Valdar's Blog

Speaking out one’s mind is not a crime. But in the recent scenario of blogging, it does not seem so. Last year, about 35 bloggers are arrested for the content they have written in their blogs, reports TechCrunch.

Most of these arrests were made by the repressive governments like Egypt, China, Saudi Arabia, and Iran as they consider the content posted on the blogs as threat to their governments. According to the annual World Information Access report, there has been a significant increase in those falling foul of the law in countries such as China, Egypt and Burma.

In India too, controversies related to blogging occurs time and again. Recently, the Mumbai based Gremach Infrastructure Equipments & Projects, which provides construction machineries to medium and large construction companies, has filed a defamation case against Google India for hosting a series of articles on its blogging site, campaigning against its mines in Mozambique. The Bombay High Court has asked the search firm to furnish information about the blogger in an interim order, reported The Economic Times. But Google’s India office refused to reveal the name of the blogger. In 2005, IIPM sued Gaurav Sabnis, a sales specialist in IBM, as he wrote in his blog that the facts that IIPM publish in its ads are not real.

Noticeably, there is an increase of more than three times in the arrests as compared to that in 2006, according to researchers at the University of Washington in the US. “Egypt, Iran and China are the most dangerous places to blog about political life, accounting for more than half of all arrests since blogging became big,” says Phil Howard, an assistant professor of communication at the university.

There is also a possibility that the number of arrests might even be higher as a lot of them are not made public. There are many evidences of this kind of arrests. Reza Valizadeh was arrested in Iran in November, 2007 for revealing Iranian president’s overpriced dogs that his security team uses. Charles Leblanc was arrested in Canada in June, 2006 for taking pictures at a conference for his blog. Again, Josh Wolf was arrested in USA in August, 2006 for videotaping a burning police car. However, the number of arrests in 2008 seems lower till now. Five bloggers have been arrested around the world during the first quarter of the year. One of them is Welshman Gavin Brent, who was convicted in April of writing “grossly offensive and menacing messages” on his site. “The real number of arrested bloggers is probably much higher, since many arrests in China, Zimbabwe and Iran go unreported in the international media,” Phil Howard said.

Blogging has become immensely popular in countries with authoritarian regimes to express one’s viewpoint. As a result, governments always keep an eye on the blogs in case it might raise any sensitive issues. A report says that the average sentence for those who were sent to jail was 15 months.