Can you read me now?: The Oiwan Lam case…
Recently, I posted an article regarding Oiwan Lam and the absurd allegations of obscenity that have her facing a potential fine of $50,000 and a year in Hong Kong prison.
If you think it is a case that does not impact you as a blogger or as a citizen, please think again. It was a relatively benign Flickr photo that has her headed to court next month.
Recently, a staunch advocate of China NGO’s, the China Development Brief, was forced by authorities to close its Chinese edition, missionaries have been deported by the hundreds, and hundreds of thousands of blogs were blocked (or re-blocked) in the shut-downs of Blogger, Blogspot, Typepad, LiveJournal, WordPress.com and others. One voice silenced or oppressed is not a delicate rebuff of human rights: It is violent and terrifying and part of the cyber-genocide of ideas that represent and celebrate dialectical ideologies. Liberal or Conservative, no one is in a privileged class once purging becomes routine.
John Kennedy of Global Voices Online, and elsewhere in the blogsphere, has listed the salient issues involved in Oiwan’s case as demands on the Free Oiwan Lam cause group now on Facebook:
-Grant Oiwan judicial review and strike down this ridiculous case, as was done with the Chinese University student magazine and Ming Pao newspaper (see my article The Hong Kong Monkey Trials) before her.
-Make the currently unelected members of the Obscene Articles Tribunal accountable to the public.
-Demand a legal definition in Hong Kong of ‘indecent’ so that the term will no longer be abused by crusading judges and applied at their unjustified discretion.
I will be posting a link soon to Oiwan’s defense fund is at interlocals.net .…Be sure to click on the button created for Oiwan. PLEASE Drop a few dollars in the kitty, And please blog about this issue….
More:
Oiwan’s interview with the BBC
The latest information here: RC
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Great post! I’ll definitely be linking to it when I blog on this. Oiwan’s case is ridiculous.
It should be frightening to people that something like uploading a benign photo to Flickr could get you arrested. It is something I do all the time!
And my blog is still blocked, for unknown reasons. I combed through all my comments and posts to see if there was anything obviously ‘offensive’ such as changing Tibet to TAR and even changed a few other benign things, but to no avail sadly. Looks as though I cannot self censor adequately.