12 Aug 2011 | Index Index, minipost
Officials at the state-run Cultural Centre of the Philippines shut an art exhibit on Tuesday after it provoked heated debate, threats and hate mail for combining Christian symbols with phallic objects. The decision by the centre’s board of directors came a day after former first lady and art patron Imelda Marcos joined politicians and Roman Catholic church leaders in denouncing the exhibit. The board said it made the decision because of “an increasing number of threats to persons and property,” including the artists and staff. It said the threats increased after critics vandalised an installation by removing a wooden penis from a poster depicting Jesus Christ.
12 Aug 2011 | Index Index, minipost, News and features
South Korea‘s government will go ahead with plans to scrap the current real-name system for internet users in the wake of the country’s worst online security breach. Last month, personal information including names, mobile phone numbers and email addresses of about 35 million users of the country’s popular internet and social media sites Nate and Cyworld was stolen in a hacking attack. The real-name system, introduced in 2007, requires people to use their real names and resident registration numbers when making online postings on websites with more than 100,000 visitors per day.
12 Aug 2011 | Index Index, Middle East and North Africa, minipost, News and features
Yemeni security forces confiscated copies of Ahdath al-Madina, a local independent newspaper, on 7 August. Security forces seized the paper from newsstands in order to stop its distribution on the national level. Last April, security forces confiscated and publicly burned issues of the same paper, because of material deemed to be “detrimental to the president [Ali Abdullah Saleh]”. Yemen has had anti-regime protests since February. According to the Arabic Network for Human Rights Information (ANHRI), security forces regularly remove newspapers in order to suppress the public’s growing frustrations with President Saleh.
12 Aug 2011 | Index Index, minipost
An additional charge has been brought against Sithu Zeya, a Democratic Voice of Burma video reporter who has been detained since April 2010 and is already serving an eight-year sentence for filming damage caused by a grenade explosion in Rangoon. The reporter, 21, could now receive an additional sentence of 7 to 15 years in prison on a charge of circulating material online “that can damage tranquillity and unity in the government” under the Electronic Act. His mother has said that the confession her son gave to the police under torture that led to his first conviction will be used to sentence him for this new charge. Burma is ranked 174th out of 178 countries in Reporters Without Borders’ press freedom index.
