Bula to our Fijian blogger friends (or why they might not be able to read this)
14 May 2007
While I spent my entire weekend surfing blogs and viewing satirical news clips on Youtube (vitamin D deficiency anyone???), our pacific island blog neighbors in Fiji look like being blocked from accessing the popular blog hosting service Blogspot by their interim military government.
Courtesy of Radio New Zealand…
Bloggers in Fiji claim that the military is putting pressure on the country’s international telecommunications provider to block access in Fiji to blogsites critical of the interim administration.
In a statement, a site calling itself Fiji’s Freedom Bloggers says FINTEL has been contacted and army staff in charge of technology have reportedly visited the company.
The bloggers claim that a request is to be made to the head of FINTEL to curb access to their sites for Fiji internet users.
And, via the Brisbane Times…
Weblogs in Fiji have become a popular way for people to speak out about the government led by military chief Frank Bainimarama, who seized power on December 5 last year in a coup.
Sites including Intelligentsiya, Resist Frank’s Coup and Discombobulated Bubu, have broken stories that have embarrassed the interim government.
Not being able to read dissenting opinions especially when their mainstream newspaper The Fiji Times has already been compromised makes my biggest blog related problem of not being able to decide which WordPress theme I’m going to base our next blog design around seem as trivial as it really is.
I’m not going to pretend I know anything about politics or international diplomacy (apparently watching Yes, Minister DVDs is not as valuable as a Political Science degree). But I do think a quick email to your local Federal Member of Parliament will at least make sure they aware of the situation affecting our fellow bloggers.
If you feel strongly about blogging and an individual’s right to publish their opinion as well as their right to read a diverse source of information that exists in the blogosphere then find your MP and spend a couple of minutes writing an email to demonstrate that we live in a participatory democracy here in Oz.
Posted by Anthony at 09:30am 14/05/2007
4 comments… read them below or add one
Sometimes we take the simple things in life for granted and that includes blogging. I was just reading an article on the blog herald about a blogger being arrested in Bangladesh for being critical of the government.
[...] military is putting pressure on the country’s International telecommunications provider to block blogsites critical of the interim administration to silence blogger critical of the [...]
Greg - You’re right in your post and this comment that it’s a incredible freedom to blog or podcast about whatever we want that too frequently is taken for granted.
Bula Anthony!
Thanks for your post during such a difficult time for Fiji bloggers. The majority of us level-headed bloggers (not the racist lot) have formed a group called the Fiji Freedom Bloggers and have been alerting the international media about our plight. We have been flooded with offers of help and have been taking on the suggestions.
Our information is that the military junta have hired “hackers” from Bangalore, India (unconfirmed but probably true) to track our blogs. We hear that the IT experts go Blogger to take down Resistfrankscoup blog on Wednesday (it was down briefly) - it’s back up but several posts and comments are missing.
We are also hearing that FINTEL, the lone international telecoms gateway, is under extreme pressure to block Google services altogether.
Please write to your MPs and let them know about our plight.
Thank you for thinking of us in our hour of greatest need.
For freedom
Chief Intelligentsiya.
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