28 Jul 2010 | Index Index, minipost, News and features
On 27 July, a Selangor court imprisoned a man for a week and fined 11 others after they protested against the construction of a Hindu temple with a severed cow’s head. All 12 pleaded guilty to the charge of “illegal assembly” and were fined 1000 ringgit (£202) whilst two men were also convicted of sedition and fined a further 3,000 ringgit (£606) for stamping and spitting on the cow’s skull. The rally took place in August 2009, in response to a proposal to build a Hindu temple in a Muslim neighbourhood. An alternative site was eventually chosen for the place of worship.
28 Jul 2010 | Index Index, minipost, News and features
The Chairman of Pakistan’s Judicial Activism Panel, Azhar Siddique, has appealed to the Lahore High Court to permanently ban Facebook. The petition was lodged in wake of an “anti-Islam competition,” entitled “Everybody Burn Koran Day,” being hosted on the website. He additionally called upon authorities to outlaw displaying, publishing or televising blasphemous material of any religion.
28 Jul 2010 | Uncategorized
Author Åsne Seierstad has been found guilty of defamation after an Afghani family objected to her portrayal of them in her international bestseller The Bookseller of Kabul.
An Oslo court found that Seierstad’s book misrepresented the lives of the Rais family, whom she had stayed with as a guest in 2002.
What’s interesting here is that while the Rais’s have no assets or life in Norway, they were allowed to sue in a Norwegian court. But as Seierstad is Norway-based, and the book was published in Norway (and elsewhere) this doesn’t count as libel tourism, does it?
28 Jul 2010 | News and features, United Kingdom
On 14 July, 87-year-old Burmese author Nan Nyunt Swe died — but his son Zarganar, one of the country’s most popular comedians, was unable to attend his funeral, and may not even have been informed of his death. Zarganar is currently serving a 35-year prison sentence for criticising the government¹s handling of the aftermath of Cyclone Nargis. Not only that, but since 2008 he has been held in a prison so far from his home that it effectively cut him off from contact with his family. Just last month the authorities felt it necessary to forbid his family from travelling the 1500 km to visit him.
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