6 Sep 2011 | Index Index, minipost
The Organization of American States’ Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) has accused Venezuela of censoring the country’s media. IACHR criticised measures taken against satirical magazine 6to Poder, which was briefly censored for a cover portraying six government officials as cabaret dancers. The organisation released a statement saying that such instances “are against the regional standards for freedom of expression and create an intimidatory environment, encouraging self-censorship.” They also referred to a case against opposition politician Oswaldo Álvarez Paz, who was sentenced to two years in prison in July 2011 for “distributing false information“, having accused Hugo Chávez’s government of supporting drug trafficking.
6 Sep 2011 | Index Index, minipost
The Cuban government this weekend revoked the press credentials of journalist Mauricio Vicent, correspondent for Spanish newspaper El País. Cuban authorities said that Vicent, who has been a reporter on the island for twenty years, had portrayed a “biased and negative image” of Cuba. Since 2007, the Cuban government has prohibited reporting by foreign correspondents from the Chicago Tribune, the BBC and Mexico’s El Universal.
5 Sep 2011 | Uncategorized
Belarus is Europe’s last dictatorship. Andrej Dynko explains how the country’s president Alexander Lukashenko retains his tight grip on power
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5 Sep 2011 | Iran, Middle East and North Africa
Iranian publishers are reeling after measures to save money when printing the Koran backfired this week. In an attempt to make cheaper, mass distribution editions available, the Holy Book was produced and printed in China. But the copies, already on the streets, contain several typing errors, compromising the accuracy of the religious text.
Officials are now considering banning Chinese-printed editions of the Koran in Iran, in order to eliminate erroneous copies. Bookshops who have been supplied the books will have to pay the costs. Rather than acknowledging their errors, officials are focusing on encouraging the purchase of higher priced Iranian editions, which were praised for being more meticulously checked than their Chinese counterparts.
Meticulous checking is something Iranian officials are extremely adept in — it seems that the Iranian editors (read censors) have once again been investing their time and energy on surveillance, as citizens became the target of an internet security scam that enabled snooping on Google users. Google last week confirmed that Internet users in Iran had been scammed by a false certificate verifying site authenticity. Internet users unwittingly revealed their activity to Iranian officials through the usage of the “man-in-the-middle-attack”, which uses a false certificate to obtain the login credentials of users.
The certificate has since been cancelled, but Mozilla has now released an update to Firefox to further protect targeted Internet users with a step by step guide to deleting the DigiNotar CA certificate
