China Censors Artist Leading Quake Inquiry

Dissidents fear losing free-speech tool

(NEWSER) - Twitter's controversial decision to allow censorship of tweets on a country-by-country basis has won praise from two of the countries with the busiest censors. In Thailand—ranked 153rd in the world for press freedom because of its strict laws against offending the monarchy—the country's information minister called the move a "welcome development," adding that the government has already received "good co-operation" from Google and Facebook. Thais can be jailed just for clicking "like" on a page deemed offensive to the monarchy, the Guardian notes. More»

Communist regime has become 'the world's greatest threat to freedom of speech'

(NEWSER) - Securing the release of Ai Weiwei , and the other artists China has arrested and silenced, “is a matter of urgency and the governments of the free world have a clear duty in this matter,” argues Salman Rushdie in an op-ed in today’s New York Times . The charges Ai has supposedly confessed to—like tax evasion and pornography—“are not credible to those who know him,” Rushdie assures us, concluding that the regime is simply silencing the outspoken genius “in the most brutal fashion.” More»

(NEWSER) - Ai Weiwei, China's leading artist and a prominent critic of the country's government, said yesterday he was beaten and detained when he tried to testify at a civil rights advocate's trial. Ai told the New York Times that dozens of police officers barged into his hotel room in Chengdu, the capital of earthquake-rocked Sichuan province. The artist, famous for his design of the Bird's Nest stadium has been leading efforts to account for the deaths of children in last year's quake. More»

A year after disaster, Ai Weiwei leads efforts to account for the dead

(NEWSER) - China today marked one year since the Sichuan earthquake that left nearly 90,000 people dead or missing. But the government has still not published results of an investigation, and parents whose children died in shoddily constructed schools have faced police intimidation. The parents have found an unlikely advocate, Time reports: Ai Weiwei, a star artist who has relentlessly pressed for information. More»

Censorship, relaxed during Olympics, on rise again as economy slows

(NEWSER) - China has quietly reinstated the web censorship lifted during its Olympics image cleanup, the New York Times reports today. As in the past, the tightening comes as growing unemployment raises the government’s fears of social unrest. The government defended its right to censor sites that violate Chinese secession laws, which apparently includes BBC, Voice of America, and several Hong Kong publications. More»