* Turkish Blog Awards 2009 organized by
Bloglama have been announced. Click
here to see winner blogs.
* EuroBlog Awards organized by
Alianzo,
e!tb and
Spri have been announ- ced. Click
here to see the results and
the best European blog.
* Burma has been judged the worst country in the world for online restric- tions in a report looking at the repression faced by bloggers. The New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists, which has compiled a list of the
10 worst countries to be a blogger, says it wants to shame those governments which are most aggressively attempting to curtail and censor web activity. Bloggers inside
Burma proved invaluable in passing out information during the September 2007 uprisings, leading to the ruling military junta blocking the internet completely for a period.
Iran, where a young blogger died in prison last month, was named as the second-worst country. Omid Mir Sayafi died in Tehran's Evin jail, which is known to hold political prisoners, after being arrested for allegedly insulting Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, in a blog he posted. The "roll of dishonour" goes on to name
Syria, where internet cafe owners were ordered to report on customers;
Cuba, where 21 bloggers are in jail;
Saudi Arabia, where an estimated 400,00 sites are blocked;
Vietnam;
Tunisia;
China, where the most comprehensive online controls are in place;
Turkmenistan, where the nation's first internet cafe was guarded by troops; and
Egypt where more than 100 bloggers were detained last year alone. All of the countries have burgeoning blogging cultures despite extensive monitoring, censorship and repression by the authorities.
The Observer
.
