Weiss,+Peter

Vietnamese jails democracy activist

 * 1/29/10 (wiki post date, not event date)**

Pham Thanh Nghien, a Vientamese author and activist who has criticized the Communist leadership in Vietnam, was found guilty on charges of “spreading propaganda against the state,” along with three years under house arrest. She is apparently the fourteenth Vietnamese democracy activist to be tried in the last three months. Nghien was previously arrested in September of 2008 but the charges were dropped, and she was instead charged based on her writing and interviews.

**Sources**
1. [|BBC News] 2. [|Al Jazeera English]

Comparison
The two articles were fairly similar. The BBC article lacked the enormous analysis section and databank present in many of their articles, and thus was closer in length to the Al Jazeera article. The focuses were more or less the same; both articles detailed Nghien’s initial arrest in 2008, her charges, and analyzed the current crackdown on activists in the country (mainly in the last sections of both articles).

Al Jazeera was considerably more specific about the crackdown, however. They provided a number (fourteen) of tried activists in the past three months, names of the four activists sentenced the previous week (BBC did mention one, Le Cong Dinh, but did not mention Nguyen Tien Trung, Tran Huynh Duy Thuc, or Le Thang Long).

Response
This isn’t very surprising, but it does represent the state of the Communist regimes in Indochina and China. The system is pretty obviously corrupt; there’s no reason for people to spread that much “propaganda” if the system is working. And while Nghien almost certainly doesn’t deserve to be jailed, she was lucky to receive a lighter sentence than others—the four arrested last week were sentenced for 5-16 years, and apparently the death penalty was a possibility, which is simply ridiculous. Even if it actually was propaganda that significantly hurt the government and the government was completely not corrupt, the death penalty is waaaaaay overkill for propaganda.

US calls for China to ‘probe Google attacks’

 * 1/22/10 (wiki post date, not event date)**

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has called on China to investigate the alleged attacks on Google that sparked the company to threaten to leave the country. According to Google, accounts belonging to human rights activists were hacked, which led Google to announce that they would no longer abide by Chinese censorship laws on search results. The company later warned it may shut down Chinese operations. Clinton also named Tunisia, Uzbekistan, Vietnam, and Egypt as countries where the "free flow of information" was threatened.

**Sources**
1. [|Al Jazeera English] 2. [|BBC News]

Comparison
The two articles were significantly different, although they basically covered the same content. As usual, the BBC article was extremely long compared to the Al Jazeera article, and repeatedly mentioned other aspects of Clinton’s speech, notably her mentionings of other countries restricting internet content. Although Google was in the title of both articles, BBC barely mentioned the company’s relevance, and was more focused on the censorship. In fact, Google is never mentioned at all in the “Transparency call” section, which is by far the longest of the article (by contrast, the company is mentioned a total of twelve times in the considerably shorter Al Jazeera article).

The Al Jazeera article only mentioned the other countries once (“among other countries she named were North Korea, Tunisia and Uzbekistan as well as Vietnam where she noted that access to social networking sites has ‘suddenly disappeared’”), and traces back to background info more (“…Google, which first entered the Chinese market in 2006 saying it would adhere to Chinese internet censorship rules”). Neither the US nor Clinton’s name are mentioned in the title, which seems rather strange, although it is made clear it is someone’s quote (China ‘must probe Google attacks’).

Response
I think the whole thing is kind of ridiculous. First of all, censorship on the internet doesn’t work. Sure, people casually surfing the internet won’t stumble across a website that undermines the Chinese government’s regime, but if someone really wants to find something like that, it wouldn’t be that difficult (you could find the website some other way and manually enter it in, get a link from an unfiltered site, use a search engine in another language, use a proxy, there are numerous ways). The real power China has over its people is instilling the fear that, if one were to use one of the methods for getting around the filters, they would be found out.

Guinea junta hunts down suspects

 * 12/11/09 (wiki post date, not event date)**

Following the assassination attempt of Guinea military leader Capt Moussa Dadis Camara, Guinea has begun hunting down people involved in witnessing, participating in, or helping to plot the incident. Camara was successfully shot in the head by his head of security, Aboubacar Sidiki Diakite, but he survived and is currently in treatment at a Moroccan hospital. The incident occured as Camara, who blamed Diakite for the September 28 massacre of an est. 157 people, attempted to arrest Diakite, even though Camara himself is under investigation for the incident.

Reports indicate that the suspects being hunted down are being violently tortured, particularly troops associated with the incident, which has increased tension among civilians in Conakry, Guinea’s capital.

**Sources**
1. [|Al Jazeera English] 2. [| BBC News]

[| Additional information (later article on same subject)]

Comparison
The two articles were quite different. The most significant similarity was the mentioning of brutalities regarding the methods for “hunting down” suspects, and the state of fear among civilians in Conakry. The only other major similarities were the citing that Camara was shot in the head, and that he was flown to Morocco to be treated.

The BBC article gives a figure for the people arrested (“more than 60”), which the Al Jazeera article completely lacks. The BBC article also quotes Idrissa Cherif again. The BBC article is very long, while the Al Jazeera article is quite short. Most of the space in the BBC article consists of varying reports on all three events (the September 28 massacre, the December 4 shooting, and the hunting down of suspects), and the tying together of them, along with a detailed list of events leading up to the September 28 incident. The Al Jazeera article instead devotes half of the article to a section titled “Insecurity,” which includes the information about fear in Conakry, but also speculates signs of a cover-up.

Once again, BBC uses the term “junta” on several occasions, as in the title (“Guinea junta arrests 60 for 'trying to kill Camara'”), while Al Jazeera refers to the Guinean “military” or “military government/leader” (also noticeable in the title, “Guinea military round up suspects”).

Response
This incident seems to be spinning out of control. This kind of a crackdown is completely unjust in my opinion, and the event should really be handled with more control. Reports seem to indicate that civilians and witnesses are being arrested and shot as well as people directly involved with the incident, which doesn’t make any sense.