Unite for Human Rights
“Blogs get people excited. Or else they disturb and worry them. Some people distrust them. Others see them as the vanguard of a new information revolution. Because they allow and encourage ordinary people to speak up, they’re tremendous tools of freedom of expression.
Bloggers are often the only real journalists in countries where the mainstream media is censored or under pressure. Only they provide independent news, at the risk of displeasing the government and sometimes courting arrest.“
Having belonged to Amnesty International for around 30 years, and been “active” in various capacities for most of that time, I felt I couldn’t ignore the “Bloggers Unite for Human Rights Day“. This is joint action by Amnesty International and BlogCatalog, to encourage Bloggers worldwide to blog on a human rights issue on May 15.
And there are many things we could chose to blog about. The most obvious in the context is the case of Shi Tao, a Chinese journalist, serving a ten-year prison sentence for sending an email to the United States. Yahoo provided information to the Chinese Government that led to his imprisonment. [Read more…]